[Beowulf] Open Grid Scheduler (SGE)

[Reuti]

Am 25.01.2011 um 08:59 schrieb Andrew M.A. Cater:

> On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 07:49:30AM +0100, Jonathan Aquilina wrote:
>> Clustering isn't the only one that oracle is doing something with
>> turns out they are also doing something with OpenOffice.org. Its
>> been forked to LibreOffice.
>> 
>> Would really love to know what they are up to.
>> 
> 
> There's a distinction to be drawn here. Oracle appear to be divesting themselves of chunks of code
> they no longer wish to maintain for certain small projects. Likewise, certain Sun hardware is no
> longer of any interest to them (and the licensing terms for hardware support and Solaris have changed 
> subtly - you now _need_ hardware support from Oracle to be able to download patches and security fixes
> that were previously more freely available.)

I thought the hardware business was the key point to buy Sun - to sell a database including the serving hardware. What's left otherwise? But you are right: they focus already on Intel machines only.

-- Reuti


> SGE doesn't fit their picture - a Sun OEM has stepped up to carry on development, all's well.
> 
> In other areas, there have been forks, for good or ill.
> 
> OpenSolaris was (fairly unceremoniously) canned and the "open source", non Oracle employee developer community, 
> such as remained, were effectively told they were not welcome. Various interested parties and distributions like
> Nexenta have combined to form Illumos. They've taken the last available code dumps available to them and are carrying on.
> 
> Hudson - a build architecture tool - is a subtly different case. Oracle suddenly declared that they were trademarking
> the name in Europe and the US and that they, effectively, now owned the community. The non-Oracle developers, who had
> put in much of the work, were left in a difficult position. Oracle could exert undesirable pressure by use of / withholding 
> the name. Following significant negotiations with Oracle which broke down, the original lead developer and others have
> suggested a full rename instantaneously. Hudson should become Jenkins - Oracle are left with a worthless trademark, no
> developer community and business will carry on as usual outside Oracle and Oracle infrastructure.
> 
> OpenOffice had already effectively been forked a couple of times - once by IBM, once by Novell and others - because Sun
> weren't accepting patches. As Oracle took over attempts were made to re-integrate forked code. The outside developer 
> community has been waiting many years for a proper Community Council. When Oracle appeared difficult/impossible to work
> with, various vendors and others effectively seceded: forking the code, declaring UDI and a rename of the code and
> establishing The Document Foundation to maintain it, continue supporting ODF and so on. Seemingly, the entire German
> translation and localisation team moved across en masse, for example: it is _EXTREMELY_ unclear whether Oracle possesses 
> the will or expertise in house to continue with OpenOffice at the moment. [The commercial product - still StarOffice - 
> appears to have died a lonely, unloved and unmourned death]. 
> 
> Hence LibreOffice: much of the patched code that never got back to sun, a vibrant community. 
> A massively stripped and pruned codebase in a consistent version control system, stripping 
> out much code retained by people keeping it around because they didn't trust the VCSes as
> they changed. [Michael Meeks pointed out in a blog post how many duplicated copies of icons 
> LO had removed, for example].
> 
> In other news: it is possibly unsafe to use Java - it may become significa\ntly more expensive to do so. Virtualisation
> with VirtualBox is feasible today - but it looks as if it will effectively become a fully closed source product.
> 
> I'm not sure that Oracle realised what goodwill they have thrown away or whether they know what they're up to.
> The move beyond a single database product and ancillaries has proved interesting. 
> 
> I personally am now significantly distrustful of Oracle as a company. I would actively suggest to anyone prepared 
> to listen that they consider not doing business with Oracle and that they should stop buying or using any of Oracle's products. 
> Likewise, for them  to consider not recommending Oracle or their products to personal or business associates and not to be seen 
> as otherwise supporting Oracle's activities in any way. 
> 
> In the hope that this helps clarify what seems to be happening,
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Andy
> 
> 
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