Last week on the Gentoo Forums someone asked "What manufacturers are the most supportive of open source?"
I thought my response was worth repeating here, especially since many OS advocates aren't necessarily using Gentoo...
| jesnow wrote: |
| What manufacturers are the most supportive of open source? |
Sun.
Open Source is About Sharing: Ideas, Code, Innovation
In Sun's view, open source is the ideal development and business model for today's massively connected, Participation Age economy. The open source model offers liberties to every user and developer that encourage genuinely collaborative innovation.
Open source software can lower customer barriers to: access, switching costs, and greater value achieved in an environment that allows for increased participation and competition. Companies gain compensation for their innovations by building on the contributions of others. In a first move towards open sourcing the Sun software portfolio, Sun has announced a no cost offering of its server side software.
| Quote: |
| If I wanted to buy hardware with the specific intent of having my money go to companies that support open source, what should I buy? |
A Sun.
Q:
Why would Sun "open" its current hardware chip design?
A:
We also believe the open source model can help solve some serious issues created by more traditional licensing terms in a rapidly-changing semiconductor industry. In particular, we think it can be a key enabler for the increasingly important "System On a Chip" (SOC) design business.
Everything these days is fast enough/cheap enough.
| Quote: |
| I want easy linux intergration and support for open source projects. |
Sun
#1 in Open Source
A recent report on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) prepared for the European Commission measured Sun's activity within the GNU/Linux community.
The report found that Sun contributes substantially more code to a Linux distribution than any other organization, including IBM, Red Hat, Novell, Hewlett-Packard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In fact, Sun's overall contribution is more than three times that of its next closest competitor, IBM, in second place, and more than five times that of Red Hat, in third. According to the report, Sun has contributed more than $400,000,000 worth of source code to the GNU/Linux distribution.
| Quote: |
| Everything these days is fast enough/cheap enough. |
Well, with Sun it's more like you get your moneys worth
We had a requirement to support 60 Sun Solaris databases; we estimated that running the systems would take 16 kilowatts of power. But after putting energy consumption on the agenda, we decided to become early adopters of Sun’s CoolThreads technology. This choice helped to reduce the power required to 3 kilowatts.
| Quote: |
| Pesumably the two go hand in hand. Do they? |
They seem to at Sun. Course not all is perfect. I'd rather see Solaris released under GPLv2, and i'd like to see atx form factor boards and entry level notebooks, but AFAICT, Sun wins the arguement of "What manufacturers are the most supportive of open source?"
Oh, and when I talk about Suns to my friends, I always hear varients of "how can a Sun be so good if it only runs at 1.{2,6)Ghz and my P4/AMD runs at 3+Ghz?"
To which my reply is to ask which is better, a Supra that can do 200+MPH, or a semi that can carry 20 tons?
So when You go buy your next computer, you might just consider who will give back to the community, and choose Sun.
I'm planning to at least give them a try.
