Non-linux servers

Tom Buskey tom at buskey.name
Mon Dec 12 09:32:01 EST 2005


On 12/12/05, Paul Lussier <p.lussier at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Bill McGonigle <bill at bfccomputing.com> writes:
>
> > On Dec 9, 2005, at 10:25, Paul Lussier wrote:
> >
> >> If
> >> Solaris eventually morphs into a truly Free OS, what advantage would
> >> linux provide other than perhaps it's slightly larger hardware support
> >> matrix?
> >
> > GPL, embedded systems.
>
> Hmm, yeah, I can see not wanting to use Solaris for embedded systems.


I've seen it.  One company I worked for used a Sparc running solaris 2.5 as
an embedded ATM "hub/router" thingy.  ATM links are usually static but they
used this box to set them up dynamically.  The Sparc was an OEM board
(sun4e?) with a custom box around it.  One serial port exposed for a
terminal, the other hooked up to a special switch that would reboot.

The *entire* OEM solaris was loaded.  KCMS which does color management was
even loaded.  This had a security hole at the time.  Obviously it wasn't
setup by a typical sysadmin.

Everything was compiled with all warnings off, ran as root, etc. I was asked
to go through security on it once for the next revision, which they later
killed.  You may have used the 1st version if you make long distance calls
to/from the AZ, NM, TX, NV area.

They did look at FreeBSD and Linux for the 2nd version.  It was about RH 6.2era.

Not every embedded system is low power/inexpensive.


I'm not sure what you mean by the GPL comment.  If Solaris were
> released under license which qualified as "truly Free", I probably
> wouldn't care which license that was.  Personally, I like the BSD
> license better, since, technically, it's *more* free than the GPL is,
> but that's not the point.  And wouldn't it be hysterical to see
> Solaris under a BSD license (in an ironical sort of way).



I wonder how many companies release thier code on BSD vs a more restricted
GPL or other license?  The BSD license could allow another company to modify
the code and take it propriatary (the TCP/IP stack in most OSes, Most Unixen
have BSD code).

To be fair to Sun, they have generally documented the protocol so others
could reimplement it (NIS, NFS, Sparc?)


--
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad
measures.
  - Daniel Webster
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