[csw-users] Why support Solaris 8 onwards?

[Trygve Laugstøl]

Brandorr wrote:
> The thing is, just because you don't use x version of Solaris, doesn't
> mean you are in the majority. Dennis has stated that a MAJORITY of
> Blastwave download traffic is from machines running Solaris 8. End of
> discussion.

The world really isn't that black and white.

Most packages should work just fine on Solaris 8, and that is great. If 
building the packages work fine on 8, there is not reason to support it 
if there are *users* for the package.

The question here is not (to me at least) 8 vs 10, it is about how much 
effort vs how much the users loose. I can also imagine that the packages 
that are hard to build on Solaris 8 are the ones that are multi-media 
related and use features only in newer Solaris releases. Those packages 
are most likely only used by users with modern boxes so I would *guess* 
that supporting on Solaris 10 wouldn't hurt the users that much.

This is where a bug/issue tracking system would help out, to be able to 
find out which packages are popular and on which platforms.

>>From Sun's website:
> Solaris 8 support:
>     * Last order date is November 16, 2006
>     * Last ship date is February 16, 2007
>     * End of service life will be March 31, 2012
>     * A grace period until 12/31/2007 lets customers install Solaris 8
> on NEW Sun systems they purchased without requiring purchase of a
> Right-To-Use (RTU) license.
> 
> Personally, I would suggest that Blastwave supports, at a minimum,
> Solaris 8 for at least the time that Sun does. That means Solaris 8
> support for another 4 years+.

Blastwave should support its users, not Sun. Though they often 
correlate, that is not always the case.

--
Trygve

> -Brian
> 
> On 9/17/07, Thiele, Karl D (Karl) <karl.d.thiele at verizonbusiness.com> wrote:
>> I like Trygve suggestion.   I would not put a lot into supporting Solaris 8. If an update builds there straight out fine, but I would waste time shoe horning to work on Solaris 8.  Just leave some documentation if you want the new things move to .....   But keep the archive of what works now. From what I have been told, the company I am at are paying some big  bucks for Solaris 8 support, it is not a question of having or not having support.
>>
>> End of my 2 cents..  BTW lot of folks here really appreciate the work Blastwave does, not expressed often enough.
>>
>> -karl
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: users-bounces+karl.d.thiele=verizonbusiness.com at lists.blastwave.org [mailto:users-bounces+karl.d.thiele=verizonbusiness.com at lists.blastwave.org] On Behalf Of Trygve Laugstøl
>> Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 2:47 PM
>> To: questions and discussions
>> Subject: Re: [csw-users] Why support Solaris 8 onwards?
>>
>> Ben Taylor wrote:
>>> Thiele, Karl D (Karl) wrote:
>>>
>>>> Folks,
>>>>
>>>> Oh, I need to weight in here, very much on the side of Anthony.  Well an
>>>> ls | wc -l of /home shows me 167 solaris 8 blades, these are just in my
>>>> group. We are one of the biggest customers of Sun. We will be moving
>>>> most of our Suns to Solaris 10 from 8 within the next 6-12 months only
>>>> because of hardware upgrades to production. New boxes do not support
>>>> Solaris 8.
>>>>
>>>> All the developers of UNIX based applications, at this company, have now
>>>> come to rely on Blastwave. Almost everyone runs kde. (do not send us
>>>> back to CDE, I would have to consider finding a new job).
>>>>
>>>> "If it is not broke do not fix it."  So true in business. Some boxes
>>>> that are not being replaced, will remain solaris 8.
>>>>
>>>> You could even freeze off adding new software for Solaris 8, but do not
>>>> get rid of it. It is just disk space and that is cheap these days.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I do not believe I was suggesting that Solaris 8 support be
>>> discontinued.  My experience with Open Source software is
>>> that there are substantially fewer "porters" of OSS to Solaris
>>> than other platforms.  Given that, I think it's a huge waste
>>> of time to have to jump through hoops to get new code
>>> working on such an old OS.
>> This is the strategy I would like to see Blastwave use.
>>
>> I think that a more balanced view of effort vs number and quality of
>> packages would be nice. If it works on Solaris 8, great, but if it
>> doesn't and it is a pain to get going, drop it. Make sure to have a bug
>> reporting system where you can see how many people request supporting it
>> on an older version too!
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> --
>> Trygve
>>
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