Recommending Sun

Thijs van der Vossen, 14 Nov 2006, 09:35, last updated 14 Nov 2006, 09:47 (edit).

Open sourcing Java is almost certainly a very good thing for Java developers, and it’s probably a good thing for the world at large. I have yet to see a cogent explanation as to how it’s going to make Sun a nickel, though.

Most of Sun’s revenue comes from selling hardware. In web startups and medium sized companies it’s mostly the developers who get to choose a hardware vendor these days.

Things like hiring the JRuby guys, opening Solaris and open sourcing Java has changed the way I see Sun from an old and evil enterprise vendor to an innovative hardware company that actually cares about the needs and wishes of developers.

Because of this I’m now routinely telling our clients to consider Sun gear for running the apps we build. I doubt we’re alone in that.

Comments

Giel about 3 hours later: (delete)

Their hardware is nowadays indeed decent stuff for decent prices. Solaris however is for most server applications significantly slower than Linux. Running Linux on Sun hardware is therefore a viable solution. ¶
Thijs van der Vossen about 3 hours later: (delete)

Definitely. I'm talking about recommending their _gear_, not their OS. ;-) ¶
Norbert Crombach 1 day later: (delete | show email)

Then again, the people at Joyent swear by Solaris. ¶
Dick Davies 1 day later: (delete)

It's not been slow in my experience. There's a *lot* of goodness in Solaris 10 that linux can't compete with. ¶
Thijs van der Vossen 1 day later: (delete)

I'd be interested to hear more about the goodness, Dick. Please share your experiences. ¶
Rich Green (rich.l.green@sun.com) 17 days later: (delete)

And I'd be very interested in hearing details about the performance issues. We're all lined up to focus our attention on working through these types of things - from specific performance issues, to simplicity of installation deployment, and on. But your comments would be great. Feel free to contact me directly. ¶