[illumos-Developer] ON is bloated and a bunch of stuff that doesn't need to be there should be ripped out (was Re: Heads up: perl 5.8.4 removal)

[ken mays]

--- On Mon, 11/15/10, ольга крыжановская <olga.kryzhanovska at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: ольга крыжановская <olga.kryzhanovska at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [illumos-Developer] ON is bloated and a bunch of stuff that doesn't need to be there should be ripped out (was Re: Heads up: perl 5.8.4 removal)
> To: "Joerg Schilling" <Joerg.Schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de>
> Cc: developer at lists.illumos.org
> Date: Monday, November 15, 2010, 9:31 AM
> Didn't Sun release Y2K patches in
> 1998 and updated Y2K patches in 2001
> for SunOS-4.x?
> 
> Olga
> 
> On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 3:23 PM, Joerg Schilling
> <Joerg.Schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de>
> wrote:
> > Aram H??v??rneanu <aram.h at mgk.ro>
> wrote:
> >
> >> SunOS 4 is 22 years old. I understand that there
> are people who still
> >> want to run software this old, but there are
> alternatives for it.
> >> Developer time seems to be better spent doing
> things that benefit more
> >> people.
> >
> > The last SunOS-4.x release is aprox. 16 years old.
> >
> > Jörg
> >

Olga,

Technically, "Sun continued to ship SunOS 4.1.3 and 4.1.4 until December 27, 1998; they were supported until September 30, 2003."

Y2003 was the year SunOS 4.x support officially ended by lieu of Sun Micro.
Sun offically phased out all major Sun4 hardware support and SunOS 4.x support before Y2005.

So, you have a time lapse of only seven years (16 years from the minor release of SunOS 4.1.4). Sun 'officially' wanted its customer base to migrate to Solaris 10 and ended sun4m hardware support as well. Sun did several corporate presentations in light of these facts as well as mention this in its handbooks.

Anyone running SunOS 4.x-based commercial applications 'hopefully' would go through Oracle for migration/maintenance support rather than an 'independent' FOSS-related project due to technical resource demands and commitments. 

~ Ken Mays