Everything is a Freaking DNS problem - proprietary

Why did sun really buy MySQL ?

Kris Buytaert — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:29:50 +0000

To save Solaris from a certain death ?

Reading Planet MySQL the last couple of hours I'm trying really hard to convince myselve the Solaris offensive there is not orchestrated.. but I can't.
It might ofcourse be the fresh MySQL users that Sun brought in on their platform that started out blogging but hey .. I`m paranoia right :)

Are they really trying to get at least a fraction of the MySQL community on Solaris. Do they really think they can ? Yes they lost a zillion of Solaris customers that were running a proprietary database to MySQL on Linux users ,, but why would they want to move back to a semi proprietary setup ?

According to Linuxjournal Alan Cox seems to think that ZFS is the only thing that is keeping Solaris alive. I don't think DTrace was a bigg mass tool that would convince the crowds to suddenly move to an other operating system.

So is Sun trying to Lock In a community ? Other people would call it a Jail, altough I wouldn't consider this particular type of jail a Luxury one :)

Why can't Sun just drop the whole idea of building its own OS and contribute more , they are slowly learning in some other fields , but in the Operating System field they still haven't realised they should up the fight ... but then again .. I overheard someone say recently "The best fights to watch, are the ones that can't be won anymore .."

So just remember .. the L in LAMP still stands for Linux,

Choose your platform wiseley

Kris Buytaert — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:17:07 +0000

The last couple of years , more and more infrastructure companies have arosen that focus on one platform. These platforms are companies like VMWare , Microsoft, Oracle, Documentum, and lots of the other Big Software Companies .

This is a very dangerous path to take. These companies lay their whole future in the big guys’ hands.

The second one of the companies these folks have been building on changes their API, or goes of of business They can be put out of business by the flick of a button.

While this wasn’t done on purpose, it illustrates the dependency of the client companies on the master company.

I also wouldn’t start a company that depends so tightly on another one.

Building your business in a sane way is building it on Open Standards.. not on a proprietary API.

Complexity in Virtualization Opinions

Kris Buytaert — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 17:09:12 +0000

Tarry needed a full page to explain that there is no way you can keep up documenting or building a product on top of a proprietary product such as VMWare because they will change things you depend on behind your back.

What I still don't get however is why he keeps interviewing people from exactly these kind of companies.. companies that build on top of proprietary software that have little added value themselves. Yet he gives them good advise however..

But I`m wondering how much of a disaster tourist he really is :)

10 or 100 Virtualization vendors to watch die fast in 2008?

Kris Buytaert — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 16:11:00 +0000

Tarry is pointing us to a couple of companies that he thinks we should watch in the Virtualization area next year.

He's right.. these are exactly the kind of companies we will watch die fast in the next couple of years. All proprietary vendors, placing a bet on becoming the next datacenter integrator are are placing their money on the wrong side of evolution.

Why on earth would a sane IT manager want to bet his infrastructure on a 3rd party tool that implements on top of a proprietary vendor ? Because he wants to be locked into an infrastructure where he looses control over what he wants to be running ? Does he want an environment where he will be forced to puzzle together functionality he really wants by trying to integrate different proprietary vendors that won't play along ?

Heck haven't we learned enough over the last decades .. the key to growth is interoperability and openness. That's how the web was build .. it wasn't build buy 100 proprietary software vendors setting up a different service you could talk to with different fat management client all trying to accomplish the same features.

If you still haven't understood that .. please move one ... but don't bother me.