> On 9/14/10, Eric Andersen wrote: > > > Whatever Apple does or doesn't do, the point I was > trying to make was that a > > whole lot of people are willing to not only accept, > but pay for an operating > > system that is closed source. A very large amount > of OS X source code is > > open and freely available, so it was a bad example > of that point. > > The new Solaris and its impending source drops bear > more resemblance > to OS X than they do to something completely closed > source like > Windows. If you want Windows source you have to be > either a > billionaire, a large nation/state, or both. And > several billion seats > of Windows is enough proof that people are willing to > pay for an OS > regardless of whether its source is available or even > marginally > functional. I think the real point that everyone is > missing is that > despite everyone's hurt feelings this decision has > been made in order > to keep Solaris viable and profitable -- something > that Sun was > obviously unable to do for much of the past decade. > > -Gary
Delaying source release and the sort of ARC cases that were previously open reduces participation; not only contribution, but useful feedback. I can't guess whether e.g. Apple, FreeBSD, or Nexenta using some of the OpenSolaris code cuts into Oracle's profits, although since Oracle seems to only be interested in customers with deep pockets, I'd be inclined to suspect that while it may make some difference, the difference is not large, and may not be worth the lost good will. Separate from that is the issue of the license being free _only_ for the purposes of developing, testing, or presentation of developer apps. Desktops, and student and home user access (at low or no cost to those groups) are essential to holding and growing mindshare, some of which eventually become paying customers, and most of which wouldn't be able to pay something like $1000 per year per socket anyway. It's not lost revenue, it's cheap (the cost of the download bandwidth) advertising! -- This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
