Wanted: Sun Stories/Policies

[Shawn F. Mckay]

Howdy. Sorry to bother such a large group, but I have been placed in a
strange position here by the power that be. In my contracting at various
sites around the area, I have had some awful experiences with SUN products
both hardware and software alike. And in fact my experience with SUN
itself has only made this worse (I.e. I had always been made to feel that
SUN could care less about my problems as a site manager, unless I was
about to buy more hardware from them :-)).

One time while talking to Sun Engineering people, I was told in answer to
my concerns that they were moving away from UNIX(tm) as a standard, "Its
NOT Unix(tm), its SUN/OS(tm?)".

All this has caused me to long ago forget about Suns as a serious machine
and to advise my friends against any Sun purchases on these grounds.

Until now this has worked fine, and I would say I have saved many would be
Sun managers much by directing them to slightly more expensive, but MUCH
better supported platforms.

On the other hand, this is now about a year old, and as we all know, MANY
things happen in the computer field in a year. And my department is yet
again getting system hunger pangs :-), and will no doubt be looking at
Suns.

With my base so far out of date, I cannot say anything really except my
experience in the past, which may no longer reflect the current state,
although from some friends accounts, little has changed.

What I would ask if this fine group, is two fold if you have just a moment
to perhaps help me save my staff and site some headaches:

a) What are *YOUR* experiences with sun, the more recent the better, but
   even older experiences count. It won't be held against you, after all, the
   truth is the truth companies make their own bed. :-)

   I will remove your name from your reply on request.

b) If Sun HAS changed, in what ways, and do they still continue to go
   their own way in the software end of things? Are they becoming more
   BSD/Unix(tm) compliant? Has their responsiveness changed for smaller
   users?

ANYTHING you would be willing to send, from tiny experiences, to major
writeups you have done, would be MUCH appreciated. If what I am afraid of
is true, SUNS are STILL a cheap startup cost machine, but the end cost of
maintaining them grows VERY quickly in person hours.

I will summarise to this group list if enough people reply.  So if you
have a story, GOOD or BAD or BOTH, please take a moment and toss something
my way.

shawn at eddie.mit.edu

[[Ed's Note: Please send private e-mail only. This has the ability to be a
"bash-Sun" topic, which I'd rather not see started. I will pass his
summary though, however. -bdg]]