The Bright SPARC
- Article 13 of 16
- LinuxUser & Developer, April 2006
While open source dominates the software industry, open source hardware is only just starting. Rob Buckley looks at Sun's attempts to start a new market
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The reaction of Linux vendors has been equally cool. Novell says it has no plans for a SuSE Linux port, having stopped building it on SPARC after version 7.3 due to reduced customer demand. Red Hat also has no plans to port either Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora to OpenSPARC.
Hardware vendors have yet to be persuaded as well. Michael Hjalsted, Unisys’ EMEA marketing director for servers, said Sun’s initiative was unlikely to sway it from Intel chips. “Multi-core is the way forward for chips, but Sun is going to be a niche player. It’ll need ISVs to support it. Our main focus has been Microsoft, with open source coming in over the last 24 months. However, it’s going to be a major change to go down the SPARC solution and at the moment, I can’t see any reason to, particularly without the backing of Novell or Red Hat.”
Sun’s opening of SPARC’s source is a brave attempt to use the power of open source to regain market share. It is creating an entirely new market, one which is unlikely to succeed, particularly with the might of Intel and IBM to face. Still, that’s what people said about Linux and Microsoft ten years ago.
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