Linus Torvalds: "Solaris is a joke"

[sreevirus]

got this in ZDNet India

When Linus Torvalds successfully harnessed the talent of thousands of programmers to create Linux, the operating system that arguably suffered most was Sun Microsystems' Solaris.

Now Torvalds and his allies face a new side of that old competitor. Sun has turned Solaris into an open-source project. The company also is building its own community of programmers around Solaris, while promoting the operating system's deployment on the widely used computers with x86 processors, such as Intel's Xeon.

But the 34-year-old Finnish programmer isn't fazed by Solaris. In fact, he's downright dismissive, calling it a "joke."

Torvalds worked for years at now-struggling chip designer Transmeta, but he now plans to stay with his current employer, Open Source Development Labs in Oregon, "for the foreseeable future."

There, along with co-worker and chief deputy Andrew Morton, Torvalds is spearheading a new Linux development process: frequent small changes to the existing 2.6 kernel of Linux rather than a massive overhaul many months down the road. The result: faster improvements.

Torvalds discussed Solaris, his improvisational programming style and other issues in an interview with CNET News.com.


Read the complete interview with Torvalds here.

 

[tuxfan]

Actually, recently (about 6-8 months back) there had been a deal between Microsoft and Sun. Solaris seems to be an off shoot of that deal. Now another open source OS comes out, which will eventually compete directly with Linux. If Linux gets busy in competing with Solaris, Windows will virtually remain number 1 for a long time to come.

 

[GNUrag]

Its just a story of a falling giant wanting support from free software community.

Solaris is OpenSource in its true sense.... Its source code has been made open ...that's all... that means that you can only read the source code... and do nothing with it...

These money making companies have very clever lawyers!!!

 

[BONZI]

 If Linux gets busy in competing with Solaris

There is no problem like that. What I believe is that linux is in competition with no one. And as Gnurag said they are not releasing under GPL however there should be a license agreement something similar to that otherwise its existance will be difficult. Lets wait

 

[tuxfan]

Its just a story of a falling giant wanting support from free software community.

Solaris is OpenSource in its true sense.... Its source code has been made open ...that's all... that means that you can only read the source code... and do nothing with it...

These money making companies have very clever lawyers!!!

Yes. Solaris is just open source not a free software (or freedomware as I call it). But well, how many people actually know the real difference between an open source software and a freedomware? Very few. Even I didn't know some months back. Thanks to mags, friends (especially GNUrag ) and forums, at least now I know the real meaning and difference.

So these companies are harping on the ignorance of the masses to bake their cakes. :roll: