SUN open sources Cobalt RAQ servers
From
Ars Technica
bq. Now this is my idea of starting the New Year off right. I've known for a while now that some engineers at Sun were working on open sourcing the software behind my beloved Qube 3, a product that I've often raved about here on Ars. Unfortunately I was sworn to secrecy on the matter for various reasons. Well, now I can rejoice, because the Qube's back-end and UI software has officially gone Open Source under a BSD-style license. The custom BIOS code is available
here, and the other stuff, now called Blue Quartz, is available
here.
bq. Hardcore Linux sysadmin types might be only moderately excited by Sun's move, because I've heard that Sausalito (the Qube/Raq back-end software) doesn't scale too well, but from a consumer standpoint I think this is great news. As I've pointed out time and time again the consumer server appliance market is really beginning to take off. The availability of a robust, open source, and quite user friendly (dare I say idiot-proof?) web-based front-end available for such appliances, in combination with ever-plunging cost of hardware and the growth of SFF computing, will make it that much easier for new companies to help grow this market with very little up-front investment in custom coding.
This is very cool - SUN
bought Cobalt for 2.2Billion and then let it languish eventually killing it off. These units were very popular - easy to configure and maintain.
Posted by DaveH at January 2, 2004 2:31 PM