Well, it\u2019s out. OpenSol\u00adar\u00adis, that is. I thought it would be fun to indulge in a little fake his\u00adtor\u00adic\u00adal writ\u00ading (or dream\u00ading, some of it really out there)\u2026<\/p>\n
\nEven the people in the middle of it all, those who came up with the idea of mak\u00ading Sol\u00adar\u00adis open source, those who came up with the idea of launch\u00ading a major ini\u00adti\u00adat\u00adive by blog\u00adging, did\u00adn\u2019t real\u00adise what an impact this would have on the world. Even now, 5 years later, we\u2019re still dis\u00adcov\u00ader\u00ading nuances, still dis\u00adcuss\u00ading wheth\u00ader this product or that sys\u00adtem could even have been con\u00adtem\u00adplated without the boost provided by the OpenSol\u00adar\u00adis<\/a> initiative.<\/p>\n
So what was so new about this? Two things spring imme\u00addi\u00adately to mind. This was the first time a major oper\u00adat\u00ading sys\u00adtem had moved from closed-source to open source. A num\u00adber of organ\u00adiz\u00ada\u00adtions had made such a leap in the years imme\u00addi\u00adately pri\u00ador to OpenSol\u00adar\u00adis, not\u00adably the Moz\u00adilla Found\u00ada\u00adtion (which cre\u00adated the Fire\u00adfox browser) but those were all applic\u00ada\u00adtions. Linux (the main oth\u00ader open source oper\u00adat\u00ading sys\u00adtem) was open source from the begin\u00adning. The oth\u00ader was the launch-by-blog\u00adging. Sun Microsys\u00adtems was one of the first major com\u00adpan\u00adies to truly embrace blog\u00adging by any employ\u00adee as a means not only to get inter\u00adest\u00ading inform\u00ada\u00adtion out there, but to build com\u00admunity, and we can now see (and this was inten\u00added at the time) the blog\u00adging launch of OpenSol\u00adar\u00adis as being a nat\u00adur\u00adal part of that com\u00admunity-build\u00ading pro\u00adcess. The 132 Sun engin\u00adeers who wrote 215 000 words to launch OpenSol\u00adar\u00adis was seen as a dis\u00adap\u00adpoint\u00adment at the time by some, as a tri\u00adumph by oth\u00aders. It was clear that this was only the begin\u00adning of what would become a wave of launch-by-blog\u00adging mar\u00adket\u00ading that was copied widely and is a stand\u00adard part of any product launch today.<\/p>\n
What was not expec\u00adted was the sheer speed at which non-Sun developers took the oppor\u00adtun\u00adity to cre\u00adate end-user applic\u00ada\u00adtions. Up until the launch, Sol\u00adar\u00adis was con\u00adsidered a cor\u00adpor\u00adate oper\u00adat\u00ading sys\u00adtem. Sol\u00adid, secure, but noth\u00ading fancy that would tempt a con\u00adsumer to switch. There were few applic\u00ada\u00adtions cre\u00adated by third party developers; sev\u00ader\u00adal hard-work\u00ading cor\u00adpor\u00adate applic\u00ada\u00adtions but little of interest to oth\u00aders. But by the end of 2005 there was an explo\u00adsion of applic\u00ada\u00adtions, some duplic\u00adat\u00ading sim\u00adil\u00adar work on the Linux plat\u00adforms such as new desktops and ports of vari\u00adous pop\u00adu\u00adlar applic\u00ada\u00adtions, and some that were tailored to the OpenSol\u00adar\u00adis oper\u00adat\u00ading sys\u00adtem, tak\u00ading advant\u00adage of fea\u00adtures that were not avail\u00adable else\u00adwhere. OpenSol\u00adar\u00adis became the slash\u00addot\u00adter oper\u00adat\u00ading sys\u00adtem of choice, and reports star\u00adted com\u00ading in of com\u00adpan\u00adies being deluged with requests to port their applic\u00ada\u00adtions to OpenSolaris. <\/p>\n
Now, 5 years after that fate\u00adful day, we see OpenSol\u00adar\u00adis being used as the base of gam\u00ading con\u00adsoles, bank sys\u00adtems, even mobile phones! Oth\u00ader oper\u00adat\u00ading sys\u00adtem developers and vendors were inspired to improve their offer\u00adings, and the sta\u00adbil\u00adity and secur\u00adity of all oper\u00adat\u00ading sys\u00adtems has increased to the stage where teen\u00adagers don\u2019t under\u00adstand adult jokes about blue screens.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Ok, now back to real\u00adity. I use Sol\u00adar\u00adis on my laptop so some of the above is my dream \u2014 more choice in Sol\u00adar\u00adis-based oper\u00adat\u00ading sys\u00adtems and desktops (the Sol\u00adar\u00adis equi\u00adval\u00adent of Ubuntu<\/a>, for example) and in applic\u00ada\u00adtions. There are lots of applic\u00ada\u00adtions avail\u00adable for Linux (Skype<\/a>, for example) that could be por\u00adted to Sol\u00adar\u00adis with (I assume) rel\u00adat\u00adively small effort. The basic things do work \u2014 brows\u00ading, edit\u00ading office doc\u00adu\u00adments, email. I can even use punchin (though not in con\u00adjunc\u00adtion with my Debi\u00adan fire\u00adwall, since I need to set up ipsec tables and that requires updat\u00ading to sarge, then recom\u00adpil\u00ading the ker\u00adnel, then fig\u00adur\u00ading out the magic incant\u00ada\u00adtions. If any\u00adone is using punchin on a Sol\u00adar\u00adis box behind a Debi\u00adan fire\u00adwall and has hints on the best way to tackle this, please let me know!). I like using Sol\u00adar\u00adis, it feels sol\u00adid and stable and although it\u2019s been a long time since I worked on a Unix-based sys\u00adtem, so I have to refresh my memory on how to do a lot of things, it\u2019s good to have the choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well, it\u2019s out. OpenSol\u00adar\u00adis, that is. I thought it would be fun to indulge in a little fake his\u00adtor\u00adic\u00adal writ\u00ading (or dream\u00ading, some of it really out there)\u2026 Even the people in the middle of it all, those who came up with the idea of mak\u00ading Sol\u00adar\u00adis open source, those who came up with the idea \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cOpenSol\u00adar\u00adis\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}