R.I.P. Sun Microsystems…

With the end of 2010 coming feverishly fast at us, it’s the end of a decade as well.
For me, it’s the end of a piece of my history, as well.
Sun Microsystems, a company that has developed the SunOS/Solaris operating system along with a boatload of services and features which most people use on a daily basis without realizing it, has reached it’s last days.  They were in a shift-changing state, changing their business structure to fit the world but unfortunately they were too slow and too late.  Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems, and is essentially absorbing their technology & tossing their carcass to the wind.

This is a sad day for many I.T. people, as it’s been a battle between Sun & many others… but it’s been a win-win battle as it was always a battle of attrition.  New services & features were always created to compete with competition, and ideas/technologies were flowing between each at all times. 

Network Filesystems, Yellow Page/Network Information Systems, ZFS filesystems, and lots of other things… from 1982 until today.  They began as Xerox PARC engineers starting a company, and ended with an operating system structure that was solid, dependable, and a worthly adversary.

I’ve always been geared towards Linux since 1995, and have worked in enterprise environments with SunOS/Solaris on Sun hardware.  While it’s OS layout and naming conventions have always felt archaic & obtuse, the technologies & services provided were cutting edge.  It was a stalemate civil war for quite some time, almost intentionally.  As a soldier from the opposing team, I salute you.  I’ve always held a love for what you were, just not your ideologies. 

Oracle’s purchase was a flank attack, unseen by most of the industry… I guess it could have been worse, Red Hat Linux could have been swallowed up.  They have been parasiting off of the existing Red Hat Enterprise Linux software for quite a few years now, naming it Oracle Unbreakable Linux when all it was is an exact copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with the name changed everywhere.  I was honestly expecting that avenue of approach.  I’m glad it didn’t go that route… that would have been the dark ages of I.T., as Red Hat is unfortunately the only real beacon in the enterprise world for Linux.