Ian Murdock has left the Linux Foundation to lead the operating systems strategy here at Sun. The last few years have seen some exciting changes at Sun: releasing Solaris 10 (which includes several truly revolutionary technologies), embracing x86, leading on x64, and taking Solaris open source. That a luminary of the Linux world was enticed by the changes we’ve made and the technologies we’re creating is a huge vote of confidence. From my (admittedly biased) view, OpenSolaris has been breaking away from the pack with technologies like DTrace, ZFS, Zones, SMF, FMA and others. I’m looking forward to the contributions Ian will bring from his experience with Debian, and to the wake-up call this may be to Linux devotees: OpenSolaris is breaking away.
3 Responses
Defection sounds a little over the top if you ask me. To me this sounds more like Sun defecting from the closed nature of the company, maybe this signals the GPL3 cut-over soon enough. I will say this as someone who uses OpenSolaris, hopefully Mr. Murdock can get a decent package management tool running in Solaris.
Nicholas,
At the very least, I think we can agree that OpenSolaris capitalizes on the same appeal that Linux holds for users and — in this case for example — has the edge. I’m reminded of Marc Andreessen’s recent quip: “Solaris is a better Linux than Linux.”
… and I couldn’t agree more with your sentiment about package management.
Adam
…the GPL3 cut-over… ??? There is no such thing – at least, if there are plans for it then nobody within Sun has made them public, and speculation about GPLv3 doesn’t help anybody.