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April 09, 2003
Thank God Google's Dumping Press Releases...
...because it might save IDG from reprinting April Fool's Day jokes as if they were true. (Hit the "MORE" link for the whole gag release in case IDG takes it down...)
Sun to ship OpenBSD on its Intel-based workstations
Thursday, 3 April, 2003
PRESS RELEASE
Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW), in a surprise announcement, has stated that it will offer the OpenBSD operating system as the default operating system for its Intel-based workstations. The move came shortly after Sun announced the death of its own Linux distribution, internally known as "Mad Hatter Linux".
This new direction comes on the heels of a strategic partnership between Intel and Fujitsu, long-time Sun partner and manufacturer of Sparc chips, to build competing Linux-based servers and mainframe computers.
"Our polling shows a strong demand for Sun-branded Intel workstations running OpenBSD" said head of Open Source Solutions Brad S. Downey. "Customers who wish to run Solaris generally do so on our enterprise-strength UltraSparc-based machines. Anyone can sell a PC running Linux, here at Sun we strive to differentiate ourselves and produce a product with superior hardware and software. With its dedication to industrial strength security OpenBSD allows us to do just that." Both OpenBSD and Solaris have their roots in a version of Unix developed at the University of California, Berkeley. Downey stated "Sun engineers are more comfortable inside the OpenBSD kernel than they are inside Linux. Furthermore, Sun has shipped OpenSSH, an OpenBSD spin off project, for the past several releases so we already have good contacts within the OpenBSD leadership."
When asked about the recent tiff between OpenBSD lead Theo de Raadt and Sun regarding hardware documentation for the UltraSparc III CPU, Downey said "We have a good rapport with the OpenBSD team. Our assistance in gaining access to hardware documentation has been invaluable to them regarding the continued development of their UltraSparc port." When asked whether he was worried about OpenBSD on the UltraSparc taking market share from Sun's one Solaris (tm) operating system, Downey had the following to say: "We don't see ourselves as being in direct competition. While it's true that we both give away operating systems that run on the UltraSparc CPU, Solaris has a much higher version number and our customers appreciate that. Now, if OpenBSD were to release a version 10 tomorrow we might have a problem."
Posted by mph at April 9, 2003 11:58 AM