davis@clocs.cs.unc.edu (Mark Davis) (09/15/88)
Sorry for the gross cross posting, but I have no idea in which group the germain posting originated. Note Followup-to. In an article (Somebody) writes: > ... [some Sun Bashing ] Come on Guys. You will bash anything. But let's not bash the good guys without reason. Yes, there are some problems reported about Sun, but name another company that come even close in competing. (I can name a couple I would like to see compete, but Sun is now a BIG company.) Yes Sun's software is buggy. But not very. SunOS is administered by one fulltime person at our site of almost 100 Suns. This is compared to the three required to maintain 6 BSD 4.2 Vax systems three years ago. If you want to talk about buggy, let's discuss OS 360, any release less than 15. I seem to think MS/DOS 2.0 was bad, also, but I didn't have intimate experience. Would you rather buy from DEC (which had the goal of lowering the price per MIPS to $40,000 in 1988 {10 times the SUN goal}). Basically Sun has maintained about a 2 to 1 price performance advantage over the big competition and continued to introduce new and improved products (like NFS (which everyone liked) and NeWs (which wasn't so great) and SunOS 4.* which is so major a change that we won't appreciate it for years). A recent posting in SunSpots indicated that Suns price/performance for software maintenance was also about twice as good as DEC's. So far Sun hasn't sued anybody. (How many companies has Apple forced to cripple their product or sued out of the business? I have lost count.) Yes, you can critize some of the things that Sun does, but bashing (implying that it is a bad company and you should not consider buying their products) should be reserved for companies with questionable business ethics (like suing the competition our of business because they have a better product). By the way, I have offered several examples concerning Apple. I do not mean to imply that Apple is the only company conducting business in a manner that I consider unethical. I have also referred to DEC. This is a company that conducts business in an ethical manner(In the main. You can find questionable examples for any company, even Sun :-).). They are just behind the technology curve, so their products are somewhat less desireable to me. Thanks - Mark (davis@cs.unc.edu or decvax!mcnc!davis) Disclaimer - I am not nor have ever been an employee of Sun Microsystems, Incorporated. I use and recommend their products, but I use and recommend a lot of other vendors products, too