[sf-lug] [OT] Oracle Solaris [...] is very much alive(?) ... Re: The LUG list is back and just in time...

[Michael Paoli]

> From: "Rick Moen" <rick at linuxmafia.com>
> Subject: Re: [sf-lug] The LUG list is back and just in time...
> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2018 23:39:43 -0700

> In fairness, Oracle Solaris is very much alive.  I just tend to be more

Well, it's not *dead* anyway, but ...
I wonder how much longer it - and any other still surviving - closed
source commercial Unix will continue to exist and be commercially
viable?  They, at least as far as I'm aware, don't seem to be
growth areas, and some of them might be getting close to
hanging on by a thread?  In about the last 5 to 10 years, I've
not encountered any environments that are significantly growing
their commercial Unix infrastructures and deployments.  The only
new purchases I've seen in those areas are mostly just "maintain",
and in some cases modest growth (notably where the application use
itself is growing).  And that seems to mostly (or entirely?) be
limited to cases where the customer seems already relatively "stuck"
on their particular flavor(s) of commercial Unix and can't easily jump
to, e.g. Linux, so they're mostly just maintaining the status quo on
their existing deployments of, e.g. Sun-->Oracle Solaris.  Anyone aware
of any significant or major exceptions to that?

And the remaining few or so ... only ones I'm aware of still, are
Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX.  Are there any others still out there being
commercially sold, maintained and supported?

Also, among Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX, if I were to guestimate ...
HP-UX may fade from them first - perhaps along the way giving
customers migration plans to some Linux flavor(s) ... HP has
historically absorbed other UNIX(es?) - e.g. Digital Unix / Tru64 - and
eventually "drop" that - giving customers assistance to migrate to
some other flavor (notably HP-UX).  But I've not seen/heard of any
real growth/innovation on HP-UX in quite a long while.
And I'd guestimate next behind that to go away, would be
Oracle Solaris.  At least with what I've seen since Solaris went from
Sun to Oracle, the support has been atrocious.  It's one thing to pay
lots of money for a solid product and really good or better support,
quite another to pay lots of money for support that's rather to quite
poor or worse.  I really don't see Solaris surviving - at least as
closed source - for the longer haul.
And I might guestimate last - AIX ... not that I'm any fan of AIX, but
at least with what I've seen, IBM's support of AIX has continued to be
solid, and IBM "got", and "gets" Linux - has well supported it from
early on, and has done much with AIX to help in its support of
Linux and be much more Linux friendly (and certainly when compared to
HP-UX and Solaris).  So, I'd guess AIX may likely be the last to
survive of any commercial Unix ... but I'd guestimate even that wouldn't
go on forever ... at least certainly not as closed source.  Also, seems
IBM would be much more likely to open source AIX, than Oracle would be
of Solaris - if anything, Oracle is relatively open source hostile ...
at least for anything they hold the keys to - and have generally
move to clamp down on licenses and remove from open source, etc. (e.g.
("Open") Solaris, MySQL, Java, ...).  So, maybe IBM might open source
AIX at some point ... but I don't see Oracle doing such with Solaris ...
unless maybe at some point they basically give up on it and pretty much
just throw it out there ... but seems Oracle is unlikely to do that
so long as they think they can squeeze more money out of it by other
means.  And, HP<insert letter here> and HP-UX?  HP<insert letter here>
seems relatively open-source friendly, ... not as big on support of
Linux as IBM, but HP<insert letter here> quite seems to "get it"
and understand and support open source, ... might take 'em a long
while, but they may eventually go the route of open sourcing HP-UX.
Anyway, longer term, open source might be the only feasible strategy
(short of death) for the few remaining closed source commercial Unix
flavors out there.  But we shall see ... may take many years yet for that
to all play out.