Joining Sun
I saw my first Sun workstation about 15 years ago, in 1992. I was a business student at Purdue University, and a childhood love for computers had just been reawakened. I was spending countless hours in the basement of the Math building, basking in the green phosphorescent glow of a Z29 and happily exploring every nook and cranny of the Sequent Symmetry upstairs. It didn’t take too long to discover, though, just a short walk away in the computer science building, several labs full of Sun workstations. Suddenly, the Z29 didn’t have quite the same allure. A few months later, I walked over to the registrar’s office and changed my major to computer science. (OK, advanced tax accounting had something to do with it too.)
Everything I know about computing I learned on those Sun workstations, as did so many other early Linux developers; I even had my own for a while, after I joined the University of Arizona computer science department in 1997. But within a year, the Suns were starting to disappear, replaced by Pentiums running Red Hat Linux. More and more people coming through university computer science programs were cutting their teeth on Linux, much as I had on Sun. Pretty soon, Sun was increasingly seen by this new generation as the vendor who didn’t “get it”, and Sun’s rivals did a masterful job running with that and painting the company literally built on open standards as “closed”. To those of us who knew better, it was a sad thing to watch.
The last several years have been hard for Sun, but the corner has been turned. As an outsider, I’ve watched as Sun has successfully embraced x86, pioneered energy efficiency as an essential computing feature, open sourced its software portfolio to maximize the network effects, championed transparency in corporate communications, and so many other great things. Now, I’m going to be a part of it.
And, so, I’m excited to announce that, as of today, I’m joining Sun to head up operating system platform strategy. I’m not saying much about what I’ll be doing yet, but you can probably guess from my background and earlier writings that I’ll be advocating that Solaris needs to close the usability gap with Linux to be competitive; that while as I believe Solaris needs to change in some ways, I also believe deeply in the importance of backward compatibility; and that even with Solaris front and center, I’m pretty strongly of the opinion that Linux needs to play a clearer role in the platform strategy.
It is with regrets that I leave the Linux Foundation, but if you haven’t figured out already, Sun is a company I’ve always loved, and being a part of it was an opportunity I simply could not pass up. I think the world of the people at the LF, particularly my former FSG colleagues with whom I worked so closely over the past year and a half: Jim Zemlin, Amanda McPherson, Jeff Licquia, and Dan Kohn. And I still very much believe in the core LF mission, to prevent the fragmentation of the Linux platform. Indeed, I’m remaining in my role as chair of the LSB—and Sun, of course, is a member of the Linux Foundation.
Anyway. Watch this space. This is going to be fun!
March 19th, 2007 at 10:59am
[...] This is big news. Ian Murdock is leaving the Linux Foundation and joining Sun. If you’re an OpenSolaris fan this has to be exciting, but it also means that Linux may actually get a fair shake inside Sun. Linux and Sun have had an odd history, with the company going back and forth between hot and cold multiple times. Looking at the latest OpenSolaris at SCALE this year, I have to admit I was impressed. Dtrace, zones, ZFS - there is some real innovation there. I still think Linux should be part of the overall Sun vision though, and OpenSolaris and Linux should be able to coexist. Ian makes the statement that Linux needs to play a clearer role in the platform strategy, so we’ll see what happens. Interesting times. Kudos to Sun for being able to pick up an absolutely top notch person and congratulations to Ian on the new job. [...]
March 19th, 2007 at 12:10pm
I wish you success in your new job.
March 19th, 2007 at 12:36pm
Welcome :-)
March 19th, 2007 at 12:41pm
Ian, congratulations on the new position. I would consider this a reason to pick up shares in Sun. I am equally glad that you are sticking with the LSB. All the best, Arthur…
March 19th, 2007 at 12:45pm
Unofficially
Welcome aboard, this was a pleasant suprise for me.
All the best and looking forward for the outcome of your future projects within sun.
March 19th, 2007 at 12:51pm
Good luck. Hope your job isn’t outsourced by 2008.
March 19th, 2007 at 12:51pm
Congratulations on the new job; it sounds like a really good match - for you, for Sun, and for the community.
March 19th, 2007 at 12:55pm
exciting news, good to apt you aboard:)
March 19th, 2007 at 1:05pm
[...] free software credentials took a big step forward today with Ian Murdock’s decision to join the company. Congratulations all round. Now we have to find a new CTO at the Linux Foundation, and one with big [...]
March 19th, 2007 at 1:07pm
Good luck! I hope that a few years from now, I’ll be able to point people to Solaris as another (working) alternative for a free operating system, along with GNu/Linux, *BSD and the rest.
March 19th, 2007 at 1:13pm
Welcome aboard. I know so many customers who will be sooo pleased ….
-benoit
March 19th, 2007 at 1:25pm
“I was spending countless hours in the basement of the Math building” … oh, the memories come flooding back. But for me, it was the mid-80’s on ascii terms connected to VAXen. In fact, I lived 150 steps from the Math building, on University, for two years, which made for quick coffee breaks …
Best of luck in the new position.
March 19th, 2007 at 1:49pm
[...] I heard about this a couple weeks back, and now I see it’s official: Ian Murdock leaving the L… What I had heard sounded like a great move for Ian and I wish him the best. It’s hard to tell from his announcement exactly what he’ll be doing, but I’m sure it will be an interesting experience. [...]
March 19th, 2007 at 1:58pm
This is a good move on SUN’s part.
I wish you all the luck necessary to complement your extreme competence.
I wish you success, a lot of fun, and especially, influence.
This is a good move on SUN’s part.
March 19th, 2007 at 2:06pm
Welcome, Ian! Great to have you on board. Sun just gets to be a more exciting place to work by the week…
March 19th, 2007 at 2:07pm
I am so pleased to hear that this is happening. As someone who works very closely with both Debian and Solaris systems - building local packages and debugging and generally getting nasty in the bowels of each - I’m delighted to hear that the two worlds are going to come a bit closer together.
I think that this is going to be an exciting ride for Sun, for Solaris, and for you - I’m very much looking forward to some increased “friendliness” between the Debian project and the OpenSolaris gang in particular.
Excited? Yes. Delighted? Yes. The world needs more of both, but this is a darn nice start for a rainy March afternoon.
March 19th, 2007 at 2:13pm
[...] March 19th, 2007 Just read this through a post and found it on his blog, but Ian Murdock, of Debian fame is joining Sun Microsystems to head Operating System Platform Strategy. This means GOOD things for Sun. Looking like Sun may be looking more like Linux everyday. Here’s the link. [...]
March 19th, 2007 at 2:42pm
Solaris und Linux
Der Debian-Gründer Ian Murdock arbeitet seit heute für Sun, ist dort verantwortlich für die Plattform-Strategie: I’m not saying much about what I’ll be doing yet, but you can probably guess from my background and earlier writings that I’ll be…
March 19th, 2007 at 2:54pm
Ian, Could you get Sun to support Debian on all their machines
March 19th, 2007 at 2:56pm
Hopefully you’ll be able to teach sun a thing or two about how package management should work :-)
March 19th, 2007 at 3:01pm
Thanks a lot for your work for Debian.
Please, make sure that suncc will be 100% compatible with GCC on Linux :)
March 19th, 2007 at 3:14pm
[...] Lo que dice Ian en su blog [...]
March 19th, 2007 at 3:16pm
Yay. I get a warm glow with every new announcement like this.
- Chris
March 19th, 2007 at 3:20pm
please replace Solaris’ userland with Nexenta
March 19th, 2007 at 4:05pm
[...] This is what I just wrote on Mark’s blog about Ian’s move to Sun: [...]
March 19th, 2007 at 4:09pm
great news, welcome on board ! this will be not an easy job, so g00dluck
March 19th, 2007 at 4:13pm
Any news on Sun giving some $$$ to the Debian Project??
March 19th, 2007 at 4:35pm
Congratulations Ian. Hope we keep in touch. It’s been great working with you on and off over the past couple of years.
March 19th, 2007 at 5:05pm
Does this mean Solaris is getting apt-get anytime soon? ;-)
March 19th, 2007 at 5:35pm
Oh no! Every nanometre of Solaris going in GNU/Linux’ direction is a dozen Solaris customers less.
A GNU/Linux guy in this position? Why not George W. Bush as successor to Mother Theresa?
March 19th, 2007 at 5:58pm
[...] Writing about web page http://ianmurdock.com/2007/03/19/joining-sun/ [...]
March 19th, 2007 at 6:07pm
Let’s hope this one goes in in full :) Ian, can you get Sun to support Debian in the same way they do Red Hat/Novell but on _all_ Sun machines - bearing in mind that Debian still supports old Sparcs as well as Opteron hardware. Persuading someone to port apt-get so that I can install GCC and GNU userland tools on Solaris 8 easily would be a real bonus :)
March 19th, 2007 at 6:20pm
What does this mean to Debian?
March 19th, 2007 at 6:24pm
[...] por SUN para liderar la estrategia de plataformas de sistemas operativos. Como dice en su blog aceptara sugerencias sobre SUN / SOLARIS / OPEN SOLARIS de parte de la comunidad. Informo en el [...]
March 19th, 2007 at 6:41pm
[...] Ian Murdock’s Weblog on emerging platforms, the Linux business opportunity, and the commoditization of software « Joining Sun [...]
March 19th, 2007 at 6:56pm
Congrats. Enjoy your new job, but do come and visit the Linux world every now and then. :-)
March 19th, 2007 at 7:47pm
[...] en un comentario en slashdot y los de barrapunto se hicieron eco, y ahora veo que el blog de Ian (Co-Creador de DebIAN) que el tipo se sumó a SUN como lider de de la estrategia de sistemas [...]
March 19th, 2007 at 8:26pm
Ian, I am glad to see you representing Sun, both for the advancement for their numerous fine accomplishments over the years (I got my hands on my first Motorola 68000 series Sun a FULL ten years before you touched yours at Purdue - I was at GM way back then)! That old box was slow… my how far things have come since then!
Your brainchild, the Debian distribution, remains my favorite. I know that guys like Bdale Garbee represent Debian well at HP. Maybe you can do the same at Sun - and go a few steps farther than that. Get some really tight integration between what Solaris does, both on the server and on the desktop, and what Linux does on the server and the desktop.
One other thing. I know that most hardware vendors have long since conceded the desktop to Microsoft, including Sun. At the same time, I know that Sun keeps taking jabs at Microsoft, spending fairly significant sums of money to invest in Star Office, not to completely overtake Microsoft Office, but to be enough of an irritation to Microsoft to keep MS out of the Sun sweet spot - the servers. But what if we had IBM, Sun, HP, Dell, Oracle, Sybase, Computer Associates, and others, all putting their best minds together with the idea of coming up with a new generation of desktop that could wipe out anything there now? Oh yeah, find those dudes from Xerox PARC, wherever they may be today. I’ll bet they’d have some innovative ideas. How about putting the collective warchest together from a dozen or so companies, get a few really top notch people on board, and open source a solution to reinvent the desktop and create a whole new market for Sun - and even for Microsoft, if they ever get smart enough to embrace the open model. Just make sure NOT to make it a BSD or Mozilla style license, so that MS can’t walk in and steal it without giving back. Make sure you use the GPL!
What do you think of those kind of ideas? What might you have up YOUR sleeve?
March 19th, 2007 at 9:13pm
No offense, but please don’t make Solaris operate like Debain gnu/linux. Being compatable is ok, but I am really not a big fan of linux. It would be a shame for such a great unix to become a linux wannabe.
March 19th, 2007 at 9:50pm
Nice. see that your site is running on a Linux box. When will you run it on Sparc or Solaris x86?
March 19th, 2007 at 10:02pm
Thank you for Debian.
Have fun at Sun.
I hope you realize that many, many people have benefitted from your efforts, and the influence will continue for quite some time.
Once again, thank you.
Respectfully yours,
Brian Tiffin
March 19th, 2007 at 10:19pm
Now you are in, please, ask for a (open free) java.deb or java.rpm package
March 19th, 2007 at 10:34pm
So, You mentioned both LF and LSB in this context, but what about your role at Progeny?
March 19th, 2007 at 10:35pm
Ian, welcome aboard!
I’m sure that I’m not the first to say “thanks in advance” on the desire to close Linux the usability gap, although I do think we’ve come a long way in a short period of time.
I will watch with great interest the resulting OS strategy.
March 19th, 2007 at 11:32pm
Please help bring back some of the charm to Sun. Solaris gets tons more grief than it deserves.
I was at Purdue around the time you were (taking a Math degree, though). I was on the Next machines in the basement of the umbrella-destroying Math building but fondly remember when I finally got access to a locked computer room with Sun machines that had the Mosaic browser installed.
Good luck, Ian and thanks for Debian, it changed my Linux life
March 19th, 2007 at 11:46pm
[...] Murdock, the founder of Debian who just announced he’s joining Sun, criticized Debian’s lack of progress. Ian describes Debian as “process run [...]
March 19th, 2007 at 11:57pm
I’m dating myself but I remember programming on SUNTools. Good luck on your new job. Please bring back the old SUN. Innovation and computing on the network.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:12am
What happened to the ideology in all these years? Looks like in the end business was more important to you than your visions.
March 20th, 2007 at 3:06am
Ian,
good luck in your new adventures with Sun I’m sure you bring boatloads of experience and good ideas to the table. I’ve been hardcore GNU+Solaris for 13 years, in the last 3 I’ve begun to play with Linux. I like Debian because it supports the MIPS architecture (special basement project of mine). Thanks for helping bring x86 Solaris/OpenSolaris to a wider audience.
March 20th, 2007 at 3:36am
u may bring better solaris.but ur life time best is debian.Congrats.
March 20th, 2007 at 4:05am
Congratulations!
Sadly all the Sun hardware was gone when I went to UA for Computer Science (in addition to the computing legend no longer in the faculty!) but was still able to get my first sparc experiences in the computing labs over in ECE.
Good luck and thank for Debian - Linux distro of choice for the last 4 years.
March 20th, 2007 at 4:51am
[...] Debian-Gründer und bisheriger Chef-Techniker der Linux-Foundation Ian Murdock in seinem Blog verlauten ließ, wird er ab sofort die Position des “Chief Operating Platforms Officer” bei [...]
March 20th, 2007 at 5:17am
Congratulations for your new job. I worked for 3 years at Sun in Switzerland and it’s really a great employer.
March 20th, 2007 at 5:21am
[...] Sun, Murdock now holds the title of chief operating platforms officer. On his blog, he said he’ll work both with Linux and Sun’s competing, newly open-source [...]
March 20th, 2007 at 5:29am
Thank you, great decision!
March 20th, 2007 at 5:37am
Remote monitoring.
Hi Ian. I have been a long time Sun admin but we slowly replaced all our Suns for linux. We’re mostly a Dell shop running debian.
We use a monitorization tool: nagios ( http://www.nagios.org/ ). Right now we manage to check the state of the network, services, hardware, and so on and we are very happy with it.
Anyway it’s not easy to check for hardware internals like RAID controller failures, cpu heating and such. We have coded some plugins with SNMP and we are able to get some data from our Dells.
If Sun provided SNMP tables, made nagios plugins and supported nagios someway I know many admins who would gladly choose Sun hardware from now on.
March 20th, 2007 at 6:04am
Congratulations,
At least, you have realized that “free software” was not a realistic way.
Next step will be joining Microsoft ;o)
Hasta la vista!
March 20th, 2007 at 6:19am
Ian, thank you so much for Debian. I have a dream… (1) Sun relicenses Solaris under GPL v3; (2) hardware support improves to be on par with Linux, without any blobs, non-free firmware or source files lacking a copyright statement; (3) Sun, Debian and Nexenta join forces and make Debian GNU/Solaris the only official distribution of Solaris, blessed and commercially supported by Sun and Nexenta; (4) World Domination!
March 20th, 2007 at 6:24am
Welcome……
You are right it is a great & interesting time to be at Sun and I look forward to working with you.
March 20th, 2007 at 6:28am
Hmmm. Reading between those lines, it would appear that Sun are going into tha Command and Control of Windows Environment…….. Vista Driving. I hope they have got the chairs bolted to the floor in Redmond.
We are talking about Virtualisation Realised, are we not, Ian, and SurReally Secured OSINT Networking? Operating Systems Management for Operating Systems Management aka New World Order Systems …….ITs Peer [P]Reviewed Crack Troops……… Simply Complex Hacks to Lead with IT Systems Core Processing.
And all that is always dependent upon the Purity of Source Code as supplied by ITs Driver Algorithm……. the Methodology which delivers Creative Innovative Processing from available Information aka Intelligence.
As you say so beautifully understated, “This is going to be fun!”……. a Daemon Sunny Venus Project to complement a HyperRadioProActive Mars Program?
Unless Ray and Oz get their act together to spend a Pile on Semantic Web dDevelopment that IS, that is, rather than just Phishing/Mining MetaData?
March 20th, 2007 at 7:59am
I always felt that Sun lost its market position when it started paying too much attention to NASDAQ … or was it NASDAQ’s attention on Sun that caused the trouble!? It sounds like a great fortune for Sun to get an enthusiast back on board with a vision and understanding for technology. Wishing you good luck in your new position!
March 20th, 2007 at 8:22am
[...] Joining Sun Ian Murdock lascia Linux Foundation e va a lavorare da Sun (tags: sun debian linux murdock solaris) [...]
March 20th, 2007 at 9:17am
Félicitations Ian,
A l’instar de Linus Torvalds, tu viens de démontrer à ceux qui en doutaient encore que le libre n’était pas intrinsèquement viable et qu’il n’est qu’un prétexte et surtout un tremplin pour bâtir ensuite une véritable carrière chez des éditeurs « commerciaux » reconnus comme Sun, Microsoft, Novell ou IBM.
“Welcome in the real world Neo”
March 20th, 2007 at 9:55am
Thanks Laurent, you at least kept your troll in French.
March 20th, 2007 at 10:24am
Ian,
Congratulations on your new role. Sun needs someone of your caliber and expertise to get the company back on track. Having such vast experience in Linux will allow Sun to become a competitor to RedHat and the Novell/Microsoft front. Your move is a very good one, so good luck to you and I’m very glad to see another great “Strategic” move from Sun.
Best regards,
Martin Shin
(a Debian user)
March 20th, 2007 at 11:27am
Well, congratulations on the new gig! It sounds like a fun and challenging position, and it’s certainly a business-card-worthy title.
I was looking forward to working with you at the LF, but I guess we’ll need to find other excuses to get together. Drop me a note when you get a few moments, if you think of it…
Best regards,
Lefty
March 20th, 2007 at 12:24pm
Finally, Debian gets picked up by a major player !!!
This actually makes a lot of sense. Sun has a lot of x86_64 opteron based machines now and people are running linux on those as well as the other x86 offerings.
Ubuntu is becoming very, very popular and guess what… it is based on Debian. Although Ubuntu seems to be a good company, I have always wondered why a large conglomerate, like Sun, didn’t pick up Ian and Debian and turn it into a major Red Hat competitor. This move will really open up the Linux market with three major Linux distributors in play.
The question is, how do you allocate your resources so that you are maximizing your returns on two operating systems. I wonder if you will see some major convergence of linux and debian into solaris. I know that a lot of linux tools already work on solaris.
What it really comes down to is target market. With the addition of official Sun Linux, you will be able to market sun hardware, running official sun linux to small business segments then big iron sun solaris.
OK, next question - what is going to happen to Progeny? Are you still going to be involved?
Developers - how many Debian developers are you going to pull along with you to Sun? It only makes sense to do away with http://www.dunc-tank.org/ and actually get some major contributors on the Sun payroll and actually get Debian/Sun Linux out the door. But how do you do this while not impeding Ubuntu, a competitor? Interesting…
I look forward to following this over the next couple of years.
Penguin
March 20th, 2007 at 1:13pm
Important news travels fast, even if it goes in circles more than from here to there :)
March 20th, 2007 at 1:19pm
[...] seine Aufgaben im einzelnen bestehen ist bisher nicht bekannt. Allerdings lied Murdock in seinem Blog verlauten, dass er vor habe an der Benutzerfreundlichkeit von Solaris zu arbeiten. Seine Tätigkeit [...]
March 20th, 2007 at 1:19pm
The last time Sun hired a “Linux guy”..remember Cobalt??..we lost Solaris x86. I think many of us Solaris users are a little nervous now.. Should we be prepared to battle another attempt by Sun to force x86/x64 users to switch to Linux? That’s NOT a good thing.
March 20th, 2007 at 2:11pm
Debian Linux founder joined Sun Microsystems
The Debian Linux founder Mr. Ian Murdock is now the Chief Operating Platforms Officer of Sun Microsystems. He is also the chair of the Linux Standard Base (LSB), the Linux platform interoperability standard.
Prior to joining Sun, he was Chief Technolog…
March 20th, 2007 at 2:29pm
Ian,
Congarts on the new position, it sounds like a great opportunity for you and the industry. I wanted to mention that this news was even discussed on our internal blog at Intel Corp., which usually doesn’t spend a lot of time on software and open source topics.
Good Luck,
Monte
March 20th, 2007 at 2:41pm
please, don ‘t forget linux…..and his philosofy
March 20th, 2007 at 2:59pm
[...] the official announcement from Ian Murdock’s blog. Bookmark this article These icons link to social bookmarking sites [...]
March 20th, 2007 at 3:09pm
[...] himself is evasive as to what he’ll be doing, only noting in his blog that he will urge Sun to “decrease the usability gap” between Solaris and Linux and [...]
March 20th, 2007 at 4:59pm
[...] Le blog de Ian Murdock par [...]
March 20th, 2007 at 5:26pm
Congratulations!!!
March 20th, 2007 at 6:52pm
Ian Murdock Joins Sun
Ian Murdock announced yesterday that he has joined Sun Microsystems as Chief Operating Platforms Officer. Ian describes his move on his blog. Stephen O’Grady at Redmonk has a good commentary and summary of other blog commentary. This is a great
March 20th, 2007 at 8:17pm
[...] que pertenecerá a la Free Software Foundation y pasará programas bajo la licencia GPL, ahora Ian anuncia en su blog que pasará a formar parte de la plantilla de Sun. Sun por momentos da grandes pasos al software [...]
March 20th, 2007 at 8:24pm
I wish the best thing you and than all the projects that you make they are full successes. Personally I am glad very many of the decision that you have taken and history and the time place people where it is deserved.
March 21st, 2007 at 2:07am
[...] free software credentials took a big step forward today with Ian Murdock’s decision to join the company. Congratulations all round. Now we have to find a new CTO at the Linux Foundation, and one with big [...]
March 21st, 2007 at 2:49am
Thanks for Debian, and welcome to Sun! I look forward to seeing apt-get level ease-of-use for us purveyors of Solaris.
March 21st, 2007 at 6:24am
[...] Ian Murdock, anuncia en su blog, que deja la fundación Linux para trabajar con Sun como Director de plataformas operativas. El fundador de la distribución de la espiral, y autor del Manifiesto de Debian, que tan importante ha sido para el desarrollo y la divulgación de GNU/Linux, afirma que siempre le gustó Sun, y que desde su nuevo puesto seguirá trabajando por el Software Libre. Murdock afirma también que Debian ha perdido una gran oportunidad para consolidarse como está haciendo Ubuntu, aunque seguramente Ubuntu, y muchas otras distribuciones, hubieran sido impensables si antes no hubiese existido Debian. [...]
March 21st, 2007 at 8:53am
This is very good !
Do more, change Solaris to one better desktop! Personal I’m use Solais and FreeBSD, the real UNIX is very better than Linux, but lacks on the desktop. Persons like you hove the power to move Solaris, enterprise with future.
Good look
Marcelo
March 21st, 2007 at 3:02pm
Exenlent news for the evolution of free software. Sun is going by the good way ;) .
I wish you success and good luck .
March 22nd, 2007 at 3:59pm
Ian,
Welcome! Sun is an extraordinarily interesting and wild ride! Get over to SunLabs as quickly as possible and hang out for a bit.
As a simple user I’m very happy with your intention to increase useability. If users can get the GUI’s they want to effect the work and play they want then most of us don’t need to see any kind of internal workings or other machine interfaces. It’s time for a revolution: How about computers actually working for us instead of the other way around? Of course, that leaves the “real workspace” alone and uncluttered for those blessed few that do the actual systems work so everyone wins.
Again, Welcome!
March 22nd, 2007 at 4:42pm
Ian,
Welcome to Sun.
This is the news many of us have been waiting for!
There are many opportunities for Solaris usability improvements, however the most exciting opportunities, from both an innovation and businsess perspective, are in bringing a Linux strategy and roadmap to Sun platforms.
March 22nd, 2007 at 10:16pm
[...] on a blog since I’ve done that before and things went south. I did want to congratulate Ian Murdock on his move and thank him for the Debain interview he did. I’ve written a few draft blogposts about [...]
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:35pm
Your past achievements let us expects a lot from you within Sun Microsystems…
Congratulations and good luck!!
March 23rd, 2007 at 6:34am
Congratulations, and welcome to Sun! I Love Solaris, with you onboard, it can only get better…
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:29pm
congratulations
March 25th, 2007 at 12:15pm
I don’t see why Sun is so great. Personally I just don’t like Solaris. It’s somehow … weird.
Ok, Java is nice, but thats not what you’ll be dealing with, I guess.
March 25th, 2007 at 2:15pm
Congrats & good luck at Sun. My number one wish for Solaris usability - official pkg-get repositories from Sun. If you can use pkg-get to bring the ease of apt-get to Solaris, lots of people would dance with joy. Also, the Solaris serial-console text install routine does not seem to have the same level of granularity in package selection as the X-win install (especially on the companion CD). It would be nice if the install had a few ready special-purpose recipes a-la Debian tasksel. (Yes, I know about jumpstart/flash installs, but I only want to install one or two boxes and that’s not worth setting up a jumpstart config, so it would be nice if the install CD prompted for package selection)
March 25th, 2007 at 3:00pm
[...] wouldn’t drink this, Murdock did it and he is now working for Sun :o) [...]
March 25th, 2007 at 8:45pm
[...] IanMurdock.com: Joining Sun - “Smell you later, Debian losers” [...]
March 26th, 2007 at 3:46am
Good luck Ian. Maybe it is time to try Solaris… but it will be hard to reach the level of a debian distribution…
March 26th, 2007 at 3:55am
[...] Referencia: artículo en el blog de Ian Murdock [...]
March 26th, 2007 at 5:42pm
Congratulations on your new position! I love Linux and Solaris on Sun hardware, maybe there’s still a chance someone will beat sparc32 back into shape on Linux. :)
March 27th, 2007 at 7:22am
[...] Det finns flera som skriver om detta så klart (det var ett tag sedan det var en nyhet. Till exempel kan man börja med att läsa vad Ian Murdock själv skriver i sin blogg [...]
March 27th, 2007 at 11:12am
[...] como relata en su Blog personal, Murdock explica que es una lástima dejar la Fundación [...]
March 27th, 2007 at 5:22pm
As a longtime Solaris x86 user, and one who well remembers Sun dumping on us x86 customers in favor of Linux, it is certainly with some trepidation that I read this announcement. It is clear to me that Sun’s current position on Linux is that it ensures that it’s x64 servers run on the major Linux distros, and Linux in general, but that Solaris is the OS of choice. I can only surmise then that you want Linux to have a bigger role at Sun. Resources spent on Linux can only hurt Solaris, and users like myself. Why not leave Linux in the hands of the thousands of developers and leave Sun resources dedicated to Solaris? I urge you to leave the OS situation at Sun, as is. It took forvever to get Solaris x86 even on equal footing with Linux and Solaris SPARC at Sun. Now that it has come to the forefront, it would be a huge mistake to go backwards.
March 27th, 2007 at 8:57pm
Good luck… in your new job, remembers the philosophy of free Software
March 28th, 2007 at 2:23pm
[...] Murdock, il signor deb-ian, lavora per Sun. OpenSolaris e Linux sembrano avvicinarsi. tags: debian, linux, opensolaris, ian murdock [...]
March 28th, 2007 at 4:16pm
[...] Debian continua a stupire. Dopo aver pubblicamente ammesso di utilizzare Ubuntu, Ian Murdock ha annunciato sul suo blog una notizia importante: il passaggio a Sun Microsystem. Ian ha dichiarato di essere da sempre un [...]
March 31st, 2007 at 11:35am
i just open my eyes to linux, i was a guindows user, and before a mac user, but i just realize how cool and easy ubuntu is i like it very much.
greetings from jacona, michoacan mexico.
April 1st, 2007 at 12:34am
Best regards Ian, for your new challenge. Ill hope to see you some day in LA Sun Offices to give some talk
Greetings from Buenos Aires, Argentina
April 2nd, 2007 at 11:41am
I wish you the best of luck improving the usability of Solaris. I hope you have enough clout to actually do something. But I fear you will be attacking the windmills like Don Quixote.
If you could get KDE as a window manager option that would be a small start. And I mean as a OS packaged option that is fully supported by Sun. And how about some mime type support in Solaris web browsers? So when I click on a wmv file it will actually play? I may faint if that actually happens.
Best of luck. I will be watching.
April 3rd, 2007 at 7:02pm
Hey! Why not selling beautifully designed Sun-branded big USB pen drives that boot any computer into botu Solaris or Linux at your choice. I’d love to have one of those always handy. You can make one yourself I guess but why not back the product with all the strenght of the corporation.
Of course you should also make the images freely available so anyone can download a copy and install it onto any other capable USB pen drive.
Hope you like the idea
April 8th, 2007 at 1:02am
Good to see more leaders in the Linux community admitting that “free software” and “open source” are dead concepts. Welcome to the real world.
April 8th, 2007 at 5:44pm
[...] problems within the group were spreading across the internet for a time, its founder Ian Murdoch is now joining Sun, and several Linux distributions based on it are getting really popular (even a local distribution [...]
April 11th, 2007 at 2:52pm
[...] Murdock, ‘Vater’ von Debian, schreibt heute in seinem Blog, dass er die Linux Foundation in Richtung Sun Microsystems verlaesst. Er hat alles, [...]
April 11th, 2007 at 3:47pm
I will repeat the Bryan words: “It looks like we’re going to be able to apt-get our cake, and DTrace it too!”. I think that will be the last great step to solaris OS. The operating system has already features and stability that any other has. But I agree with you, “Solaris needs to close the usability gap with Linux”… but i think it’s already competitive, because there are more pros than cons(apt-get). But know, i hope the system will be complete.
April 15th, 2007 at 2:07am
Personally, I still feel that Solaris and Linux can coexist; after all, Linux and *BSD currrenly do, so why not?
I don’t get all the people who act as if this is the worst thing ever. Complaints about Solaris-x86? I was under the impression that Solaris was originally designed specifically for Sun’s SPARC lines and that x86 was more of an afterthought…
Despite stabs at both OS’es, they both have interesting and useful features that the other doesn’t have, and anything that brings them closer together is likely a good thing.
April 25th, 2007 at 4:16pm
Another one bites the dust.
May 5th, 2007 at 4:46am
[...] what is Ian Murdock up to these days? When he was hired in March, he hinted that his positions were still that “Solaris needs to close the usability gap with Linux to be [...]
May 5th, 2007 at 6:01am
[...] what is Ian Murdock up to these days? When he was hired in March, he hinted that his positions were still that “Solaris needs to close the usability gap with Linux to be [...]
May 9th, 2007 at 1:57am
[...] (Debian deriva infatti da Deb, la sua ragazza (ora moglie), e Ian, il suo nome).Ne parla lui stesso nel suo blog. Ubuntu Mobile ha da subito suscitato grandi speranze, e non è un caso che anche BBC parli del [...]
May 9th, 2007 at 11:22pm
[...] for the technology they’ve contributed to the general public. Remember that recently, Sun recruited Ian Murdock of Debian fame, who had been working at the Linux [...]
May 12th, 2007 at 6:04pm
i was to presentation of opensolaris cross over the italian sun microsystems
st benedetto croce 6 italy rome, they say that it’s a good operating system, for me
not, it has many problems for example requires less 768 mb of hard drive to be installed. than sun microsystems said that gnu/linux requires 2 gb or more and this is false, it can stay on a card, on a floppy, on a pen usb, but it does not requires so
many space. they want emulate gnu/linux on solaris, i think the time is not good to do this, and that there is many job to do again. they want use vmware or zen to use only 50 mb of space. 1 to have a native operating system it is not just an emulation
vmware is not free software as it is not opensolaris, they continue to say that is free software free software is only software under the terms of gnu general public license
it has again problems one of this for example is to the boot, if you want to install on a notebook where is windows and you want remove it, first you must overwrite with
gnu/linux or it does not delete the hard drive. other problems no good support of
bios and easy kernel panic. i founded many softwares of the project gnu installed on
opensolaris but there was not the sources codes for example gimp, gtk2.0….. this is
a violation of gnu general public license. if you want distribute cd/dvd/tapes… you need distribute the source code, why it is not said that what you put as packages could be in good conditions and then it is not said that you could find again on the http,ftp…. where you downloaded the softwares. so please invite the sun microsystems to respect the gnu general public license and to study the difference between an operating system and a kernel the kernel is linux the operating system is GNU/linux and this is a big difference. then they said that ‘what they ask linux’ is really GNU/Linux go cons opensolaris. is false they are using it as work for theirself. first they have given support to GNU/linux, now they are removing to install opensolaris. they are free to do what they want, but not to say that GNU/linux is going cons opensolaris. they was the first to give support and now they have changed idea. i solved them the problems and i have never received a thank a lot
they come to our conferences ‘university’ doing funny as sponsor, but then they are different from that really say.
awaiting your reply,
paolo del bene
[email protected]
May 18th, 2007 at 9:05am
Well done Ian, now dont waste any time making Solaris GPL so we can put ZFS in the linux kernel!
May 22nd, 2007 at 6:49pm
[...] Elsewhere in Linux news, Sun chief open source officer Simon Phipps writes: I'm delighted to be able to welcome a new colleague who's starting with Sun today. He is starting a newly-defined role as Chief Operating Platforms Officer at Sun, and is responsible for building a new strategy to evolve both Sun's Solaris and GNU/Linux strategies. The appointment is at the same time both brilliant and controversial, but is the logical next step as far as I am concerned…..Today my new colleague is here to perhaps guide the combination of the brilliance of Solaris and the pervasive and seductive character of GNU/Linux to start the next wave. Please welcome the founder of Debian GNU/Linux, chair of the Linux Standards Base and outgoing CTO of the Linux Foundation, Ian Murdock… [...]
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:12pm
[...] Q&A: James Gosling, 'father of Java'Sun hires Debian Linux founder, Ian Murdock. Murdock's [...]