[Info-vax] Should Oracle buy OpenVMS?

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <49f11a0f$0$90264$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>,
	Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes:
> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> In article <49efc7a4$0$90271$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>,
>> 	Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes:
>>> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>> In article <49ee74a9$0$90266$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>,
>>>> 	Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes:
>>>>> JF Mezei wrote:
>>>>>> Keith Parris wrote:
>>>>>>> Having worked as a consultant in a financial-services firm, about 8-10 
>>>>>>> years ago loyalty for Sun was outweighed by the 10X cost savings of 
>>>>>>> using Linux on commodity hardware. Web servers went to Linux in a flash; 
>>>>>>> Sybase database servers on Sun hung on, but they were a much smaller 
>>>>>>> number of machines.
>>>>>> Are enterprise customers satisfied with the support/maintenance services
>>>>>>  associated with Linux, especially when it comes to mission critical
>>>>>> machines ?  Or does Solaris still hold some value for important
>>>>>> applications ?
>>>>> Not much different from support on anything else.
>>>>>
>>>>>> When Sun changed the pricing to Solaris (to $0), did that greatly reduce
>>>>>> the TCO of Solaris/Sparc solutions, or did it just shift costs to
>>>>>> support and TCO remains 10 times higher than for Linux ?
>>>>> If HW and OS are sufficiently tightly coupled then whether the HW cost
>>>>> X and the OS Y or the HS cost X+Y and the SW is free does not make
>>>>> much of a difference.
>>>>>
>>>>> And it is not x10 compared to Linux, but enough to make many
>>>>> companies move to Linux.
>>>> Considering that various flavors of BSD and also Solaris run on the same
>>>> cheap hardware and the OS base cost is the same, I think it supports my
>>>> hypothesis that it is the hype that has put Linux on top.
>>> The above was explicit about Solaris/SPARC, which is not the same HW.
>> 
>> I know it was.
>> 
>>> Solaris and *BSD on x86 is the same hardware. It just lacks software,
>>> people and maybe some hype.
>> 
>> FreeBSD runs on Sparc.  Current version, same as x86.
>> Same for NetBSD and OpenBSD.  
> 
> But not much reason to chose more expensive hardware.

I thought we were talking about already existing hardware?
The point being there are otpions regardless of which hardware you are
using.  And at this point, at least as far as Sparc is concerned, Linux
is the odd man out with the least support.

> 
>> So, you have BSD, Linux and Solaris all run on the same hardware.
> 
> Solaris runs on x86-64 but it is not (so far - it may change) Solaris's
> primary platform.

And the point is?  Linux and BSD both do.

> 
>> All run the same applications.
> 
> No. Linux got more apps. Especially more apps than *BSD.

The most valuable app that runs on Linx and not BSD that I can think
of is Oracle.  Maybe if it weren't for all the hype surrounding Linux
that would not be the case.  I think Oracle on FreeBSD could be a very
big plus for Oracle.

But, the majority of real applications that run on Linux will also run
on BSD (and a whole bunch of the prety much worthless ones, too.)

> 
>>                                   What is the one diferentiator?
> 
> As I said primarily apps and people.

Hardly.  If BSD got the hype that Linux got I doubt that Linux would
ever have gotten bast version 0.97.  

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>