Sun, linux and Cobalt

[blahblahblahh]

To all who have been worried (or still are) about Sun's sometimes teasing relationship with Java, here's some thoughts on the Cobalt acquisition, Sun's indigestion, and the recent axing of the entire product line (mainly from ex-cobalt employees):

http://theregister.co.uk/content/35/34673.html

Personally, I'm just glad that Java and gaming are both still getting the attention they deserve (or, at least, are growing rather than shrinking - so it's heading in the right direction), but it's a little worrying the extent to which Sun tends to all-or-nothing the various pies it has a hand in.

[Breakfast]

I administer a cobalt server and I have to say that although the principal of a cheap and simple to run server is a good one, the facts of the matter are that they go wrong at the drop of a hat and it's often hard to fix them. The support was fairly lame as well - especially after sun bought them - when patches came out they would often break either the email or the web server in ways that could take hours to fix. Not to mention the way they would move the cobalt support site from it's original home to different parts of support.sun.net every few weeks, presumably in the hope no-one would be able to find the broken patches and keep making the support requests.

Prior to that buyout I had quite a positive opinion of Sun, but as a consequence of it they have really gone down in my estimation- I am glad they are working on the gaming profile, but I absolutely do not trust them to stay with it. In fact I absolutely do not trust them full stop.

I suspect that the ultimate consequence of the cobalt thing will be that the people who use small servers now are likely to be people who are likely to be using bigger servers in future and that Sun will have shot themselves in the foot once again by alienating their own future market.

[princec]

I absolutely don't trust Sun to get the gaming bit right despite all the help in the world. Trust in yourselves; that's a sure fire way of knowing the score.

Cas

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Jeff]

For obvious reasons I can't comment on the company decision here beyond the fact that when any product is cut there are certainly hurt feelings and lots of different perceptions on why it happened.

What I can say is to make a factual observation or two. When sun bought cobalt, we had no low priced server line.  Now the sun line is in it in a big way with low priced servers and especially with the blades.  Blades are quickly becoming an industry standard in this space.