News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Compensation as a Reflection of Values. Parent comment

Re:Compensation as a Reflection of Values by caslon on Thursday March 04, 2021 @09:49PM (#26351930)
What exactly is Oxide doing? Which parts of Sun is it trying to take after? I'm guessing hardware isn't the majority of its focus, since most people who've publicly acknowledged being hired are software people, but the Oxide landing page makes it seem like it is.

Love the podcast, by the way! Off-topic, but on the note of retrocomputing and Sun appreciation: Would you consider putting that copy of Spring you have on the Internet Archive? It would be a wonderful act of preserving the history of computing: there isn't a single copy on the Internet.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Compensation as a Reflection of Values by bcantrill on Thursday March 04, 2021 @10:49PM (#26352398)
To take these in order: for what we're doing, I would recommend the talk I gave at Stanford about a year ago.[0] It's a bit dated (and of course we have much much more detail now), but it remains broadly on point.

For the parts of Sun that we want to take after: the good bits, of course! ;) There were things that have influenced us with respect to mission, and then also with respect to hardware/software co-design (we are, contrary to the impression you might have, doing a lot of hardware[1]). Lest I sound too rosy about Sun, it had a lot of problems too[2] -- so we're trying not to recreate those! ;)

Thank you for the kind words on the podcast -- very much looking forward to getting back in the garage and recording some new episodes!

Finally, on Spring: yes, I need to find it (we just moved) and then find a CD-ROM drive (feels easier) and then I'll get it uploaded!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvZA9n3e5pc

[1] https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/1342294298692206593

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287033

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Compensation as a Reflection of Values by caslon on Thursday March 04, 2021 @10:58PM (#26352486)
Thanks for the link to the talk! Putting it on right now. The summary for it mentions open firmware in the generic sense; on the Sun note, will Oxide be reusing OpenFirmware/OpenBoot? It's one of Sun's most fantastic accomplishments, I think, and it would be a shame for it to die off.

I love Sun! You can never get rosy enough, unless you're talking about many of its executives in the last twenty years of its life...

I'm glad you guys are taking after Sun on the hardware part (and hopefully avoiding replicating its actions in driving SPARC to the ground with RISC-V)! It will be extremely welcome to have another contender in the hardware space!

Can't wait to listen to new podcast episodes!

And thank you so much on Spring! Any bit of computing history that can be preserved is a win for our field!

[ Parent | on HN ]