Principles are fine things to have, but only if you can afford them. With its stock declared a ‘junk bond’ and finishing a terrible quarter, Silicon Valley’s leading Microsoft antagonist Sun Microsystems has now decided it can’t, says Andrew Orlowski for TheRegister.
Why Sun Threw in the Towel in Mankind vs. Microsoft
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Eugenia Loli
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So the latest Microsoft ‘encapsulation’ (if this is’nt a late April Fools story) is now the irrascible Sun Microsystems. It seems like that buff-toothed imbecile Scott McNealy have finally capitulated to Redmond’s wiles. Truth though – is that this may be more a push than a fall. Sun is bleeding (money) like a stuck pig and not even this annoucement can hide the spectre of Sun’s horrible performance this year. But ya gotta hand it to MS – they’ve done an ‘Apple’ on Sun – I suspect that business schools will be studying this MS strategy for decades. Apple was effectively taken out of the equation by the 10 year deal – MS now has only one real foe and that is Linux (on both Server and Desktop). Now Sun is effectively neutered at least for the next 10 years and that’s more than enough time for MS as they finetune their strategy for Linux and Open Source. Not only have they removed the bothersome cur in Sun but they may in fact have snagged an ally in this fight against Linux’s progress – remember Sun for all its recent bleating has been no friend of Linux and has suffered even more from Linux adoption eating into their profitable bread & butter server business than Microsoft. Solaris on Sparc remains Sun’s strategic platform of choice and they’ll do whatever to preserve that.
So MS has the ducks falling in line – first sponsor SCO’s disgusting harrasment campaign, then transform potentially dangerous opponents from opponents into dependents (first Apple then Sun). Now you are free to concentrate your fire on the adversary.
By the way make no mistake about this MS has their pound of flesh in this deal – the devil as they say is in the (cross liscensing) details. Not only can they afford this easily it’s likely a sound investment for the Redmond strategists.
Its a sad thing though to witness self-inflicted emasculation. Poor Sun!
Mankind vs. Microsoft as it says in the article.
If that were really so Sun would have:
* Not supported SCO
* Not spread FUD about linux while using it for its own profit (Java Desktop System?, no linux in there, why not Java Linux Desktop or somthing like that?)
* Open sourced java, or atleast made it easier for open source communities to create an open source version of java (by say, having an official announcement that they wont use thier patents on java)
* Given real support for Linux and OSS for its servers (like IBM has done)
Is it just me, or is it IBM/Redhat/Lindows/(in the future Novell) who whill be leading this battle while Sun slowly becomes irrelevent.
“There are two reasons why Sun did this deal. The first is obvious: Sun needed a
cash infusion and their court case against MS was being dragged out with no
obvious end in sight. […]”
“The second reason was stated in a few of the news stories on this deal but has
largely been rejected as a lie by the F/OSS community: Sun is claiming that they
have customers asking for interoperability between Sun and MS products and are
tired of the loud anti-MS rhetoric. Folks, this is absolutely true. I have
personally heard the voice of a few of Sun’s customers (who I cannot name here,
as I do not know what kind of confidentiality agreements there are). Not that
these customers are necessarily MS-lovers, but they have to deal with MS shops,
or have MS shops themselves, or have to interact with other companies that use
MS software and are leery of Scott’s attitude on the matter.”
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=200404022051121…
Makes sense to me…
Sun cannot afford to fight this fight anymore – particularly because they have so soundly lost. The battle wasn’t over just Java or licensing issues, it was a battle over who would define the architecture of computing systems going forward. Oddly enough neither won – I would claim open source in general has probably been more active and lauded in this capacity in the last two years.
Both Microsoft and Sun are in decline, the only difference is the rate of descent. Look at MSFT share price – regardless of their market dominance, this stock is going nowhere, everyone knows its fully valued with virtually no hopes of dominating majaor new markets. Sun’s decline has been more obvious.
For Sun, they need to make quick survival decisions. First and foremost – GET RID OF MCNEALY. Hostile purge by the board of directors if necessary. Scott will always see the world through the “me vs. Bill Gates” lense no matter what he says. Until he is gone, Sun cannot move forward.
Second, move Solaris and Sparc into maintainence mode. Sorry guys, this is a dead architecture unless you want to stick to the very high end…i.e., become SGI. Just bite the bullet and realize now that proprietary unix architectures are over. Sparc could have had a future with linux but it is so far behind the curve and everyone knows Sun cannot fund development of breakthough performance. Sun needs to become the pre-eminent serving architecture company again. That means pushing Linux, Opteron, and Java. Opening Java would be nice but it is not required and would not “save” Sun.
Third, forget the linux desktop. Sun is not a desktop software company. Stick to serving, its where the strengths are.
>> Is it just me, or is it IBM/Redhat/Lindows/(in the future Novell) who whill be leading this battle while Sun slowly becomes irrelevent.
I agree. Sun does not like following, they want to lead. It will be interesting to see how they play in a cooperative market like linux.
Microsoft is not responsible for any of Sun’s ailments.
Yes, Microsoft broke a contract by creating incompatiblities with it’s implementation of Java. Sun sued. They settled out of court. The settlement, however, doesn’t require Microsoft to keep its original contract and make it practically impossible for Microsoft to create its own compatible Java implementation.
Microsoft created .NET.
Sun cries.
In the server market, where Sun makes most of its money – Sun have been flip-flopping in this market for a long time. While its chief competitors HP and IBM have been giving a rather consistent roadmap, however nobody can say for sure that Sun would stick to a product line and direction for long.
What happens if Sun completely changes Solaris for Linux? Or They completely replace Linux for Solaris? What happens if Sun decides that SPARC is useless? Nobody knows. What most people know is that Sun is too inconsistent that anything can happen.
The biggest mistake Sun did was placing Microsoft, instead of IBM and HP, as their chief competitor. They spend more money buying ads targeting Microsoft, more money suing Microsoft, more time whining about Microsoft, that they forget that their chief competitor ain’t Microsoft. They practically ignore IBM and HP, and when they don’t, it is cheap insults in press releases. Which is a shame, because Sun isn’t competing directly with Microsoft.
And speaking with their relationship with Microsoft, the way they acted with Java makes me think that they believe that they are doing Microsoft a favour by allowing them to implement Java. Probably they are ignorant and stupid, but Microsoft is the dominant player and monopoly in the desktop market. Instead of letting Microsoft participate in the development of Java and give some flexiblity to Microsoft, they dictate terms as if Java was so important that Windows would fail without it.
Funny.
I have no pity for Sun.
“as if Java was so important that Windows would fail without it”
You just can’t play that game with Microsoft. They conned both IBM and Apple that way, making those two companies believe that they absolutely needed Microsoft to provide things like DOS, BASIC, and Word or they’d fail.
You can’t use the same tactic against people who perfected it. They’re about the only ones who see that ploy for what it is.
On the other hand, I don’t think Sun is going to die, or even wither. Indecisiveness, in my estimation, is Sun hedging its bets and bad quarters are their way of living off their savings for a little while while they figure out where things are going.
“Java Desktop System” for all the criticism of the name, seems to be an embodiment of this. If Java the language is to diminish in the face of .NET and the open source CLR implementations, they still wantto hold onto a powerful brand name. It could be that their aim in the long run with it is to work with the open source community and have the userland parts of JDS run on every imaginable platform (possibly with FAT binaries). This would be just another way of bringing the “write once, run everywhere” idea to market.
The same can be seen at IBM, for that matter. I mean, they build their own powerful server processors (POWER and PowerPC), yet they still sell x86 servers. They’re firstly selling to any market they can, and secondly, they’re keeping their options open.
The settlement, however, doesn’t require Microsoft to keep its original contract and make it practically impossible for Microsoft to create its own compatible Java implementation.
Could you point out for me the portion of the settlement that made it “practically impossible for Microsoft to create its own compatible Java implementation”?
If I recall correctly — and I could be wrong of course, and don’t want to be accused of being ignorant and stupid — Microsoft was afforded no less and no more flexibility than any other organization, before, during, and after the settlement.
In the server market, where Sun makes most of its money – Sun have been flip-flopping in this market for a long time. While its chief competitors HP and IBM have been giving a rather consistent roadmap, however nobody can say for sure that Sun would stick to a product line and direction for long.
What happens if Sun completely changes Solaris for Linux? Or They completely replace Linux for Solaris? What happens if Sun decides that SPARC is useless? Nobody knows. What most people know is that Sun is too inconsistent that anything can happen.
It doesn’t seem like much of a mystery to me. They currently have an UltraSPARC line-up laid out, announced, and scheduled for years in advance, with key technological goals (like throughput computing) posted. Compare this to HP, whom are still juggling their Itanic disaster and scrambling for x86-64 chips. As for Solaris, Sun has put a lot of effort into Solaris 10. I think we can at least expect the roll out this year and still be a solid offering for another couple of years. I have seen not one iota of evidence that says Sun is seeking to abandon Solaris. Where is the uncertainty?
Besides that, Sun has made it a point to make all of their offerings and combinations — Solaris, Linux, x86, UltraSPARC — play happy together, so if anything were to change, chances are their customers won’t be left out in the dust. Sun has always been focused on binary compatibility between Solaris versions, and with Solaris 10 we can expect complete binary compatibility (i.e., without re-compiling) with Linux applications. Good luck getting those HP Itanics to get along with Opterons.
Sun cries. I have no pity for Sun.
I’ve found that the only people whining are those that lament the fact that Sun hasn’t completely abandoned itself to the will of the Linux/OSS weenies. Sun probably has a better friend in Microsoft than it does the Linux community. Consider the support it provides to OpenOffice and Mozilla and other OSS projects, the fact that it might become the largest Linux desktop vendor in the world, it’s bringing 3D to the Linux desktop, and is the leading vendor of 64-bit Linux/Opteron low-end servers, and it gets nothing more than spit from much of the Linux community. What’s the point???
One other thing… McNealy was a “genius” during the 80s and especially the early/mid 90s when Sun took off. But now that Sun is feeling a big crunch in their bread-and-butter market sectors, everybody and his brother thinks they can run the company better. And maybe for the sake of argument they can. But to resort to calling the man a “buff-toothed imbecile”… that usually shows an inability to make a reasoned argument. Not particularly charitable IMO either.
John
M$ bailed sun out, apple became profitable again. I think schwartz should replace McNealy as CEO. McNealy is a great chairman.
The different between apple and sun is that it’s archetecture is open and its stuff runs on other systems too. I think its a smart move for sun and M$ made a big big mistake 😉
Sun also gets acccess to cool technologies in windows server, very good
actually i think mark tolliver should be fired immediately. He does a horrible job at marketing and strategy. I don’t think McNealy has the guts to do it. Sun needs someone who is TOUGHER. They need administrative change. McNealy is a great guy and everything and hes really nice but he needs to get on the ball and reorganize his ‘failing administration’. Resign as CEO.
With all that cash Sun can finally take a bit of Apple.
With all that cash Sun can finally take a bit of Apple.
Lol, for what? To spit it out?
and 3300 more people will be outta work…
> move Solaris and Sparc into maintainence mode. Sorry guys, this is a dead architecture unless you want to stick to the very high end…i.e., become SGI.
SGI could have been much more of a company if they never put off development of Irix/Mips and never put their bets on worthless Itanic. Their flirtations with MS and Itel took them basically nowhere. If they could hold their ground in the past with Irix/Mips, SGI’s present and future could have been much brighter.
Second, move Solaris and Sparc into maintainence mode. Sorry guys, this is a dead architecture unless you want to stick to the very high end…i.e., become SGI. Just bite the bullet and realize now that proprietary unix architectures are over. Sparc could have had a future with linux but it is so far behind the curve and everyone knows Sun cannot fund development of breakthough performance. Sun needs to become the pre-eminent serving architecture company again. That means pushing Linux, Opteron, and Java. Opening Java would be nice but it is not required and would not “save” Sun.
Sun Makes more money selling Solaris on SPARC than Linux on anything. Can you prove the common knowledge that sun can’t fund development of SPARC for breakthrough performance. What on earth is “serving architecture”? There are lot of customers vested in Solaris/SPARC for thier infrastructure and they need upgrade paths can you tell me how an opteron box running linux is going to replace a 72 CPU SF15K with hardware partioning, fault management, hardware alternate pathing. A custer of opterons is not an answer. Sun customers have millions of dollars in Solaris/SPARC systems and software that run on those systems. They just can’t just move all of those systems to linux/x86 all of a sudden.
Sun also sells opteron boxes running linux by the way. But your suggestion that Sun abandon SPARC and Solaris is ridiculous. Please stop this adopting linux can save any company rehtoric.
Could you point out for me the portion of the settlement that made it “practically impossible for Microsoft to create its own compatible Java implementation”?
Since I’m not a lawyer so I can’t say I’m completely sure, but Microsoft is banned from making any updates to their VM, other than security-related. In other words, Microsoft should rewrite their VM or beg Sun for their VM’s source code.
Microsoft was afforded no less and no more flexibility than any other organization, before, during, and after the settlement.
Precisely my point. Who does Sun think they are – a company which has absolutely no influence in the desktop market (especially since they wish they could replace desktops with nice thin-clients) bossing Microsoft around? If Sun wants Microsoft to adopt Java, they should have given them some le-way. Sure, it is their right to sue Microsoft for contract, trademark and IP infringement. But alienating Microsoft and treating them like they are a small-time player who should be happy that Sun allows them to load Java doesn’t win much friends at Microsoft’s.
It doesn’t seem like much of a mystery to me. They currently have an UltraSPARC line-up laid out, announced, and scheduled for years in advance, with key technological goals (like throughput computing) posted.
They also had a x86 Solaris planned all nice and laid out for at least a couple of years, then Sun decided to shaft it. And then bring it back. And then keep it there while pushing for JDS.
Besides that, Sun has made it a point to make all of their offerings and combinations — Solaris, Linux, x86, UltraSPARC — play happy together, so if anything were to change, chances are their customers won’t be left out in the dust.
Now, just say Sun decides to discontinue their Blade workstation lines. Does this mean that current customers can seemlessly migrate to their x86 JDS solution? Unlikely. Sure, there is some compatiblity, but it isn’t even near 100%. Plus, if there was some closed-source application on SPARC that doesn’t run on JDS on x86, they’re screwed.
Sun has always been focused on binary compatibility between Solaris versions, and with Solaris 10 we can expect complete binary compatibility (i.e., without re-compiling) with Linux applications.
Considering their Linux solution is for x86, while their current Solaris ones are mainly for SPARC, I would love to see how it is binary compatible across two very different architectures. Heck, on the same architecture – it would be interesting to see if this would be 100% binary compatible with Solaris (especially when you consider that Linux and the GNU tools used with it constantly break binary compatiblity…)
I’ve found that the only people whining are those that lament the fact that Sun hasn’t completely abandoned itself to the will of the Linux/OSS weenies.
Actually, I would much prefer if they stuck with Solaris, shore up their main business (which is with their UltraSPARC mainframes, servers and workstations) instead of spreading their self too thin and adopt a much open development policy with Java; especially J2SE and J2ME (Sun’s influence in both desktop and embedded market is negliable).
While their main cashcow is being slaughtered in the market, they are hyping Ray thin clients? Where’s the sense in that? Certainly, if their market and financial positions are strong enough, I woudl expect Sun to expand and enter new markets. But neither is the case.
Consider the support it provides to OpenOffice and Mozilla and other OSS projects, the fact that it might become the largest Linux desktop vendor in the world
If Novell pay their cards right, which considering what they have been doing for the past couple of years I’m quite sure they would (and this is regardless if they choose KDE or GNOME), I’m quite sure Novell would put out stops against Sun. JDS ain’t such a good distribution, but it is finding ground because Sun’s behind it. Novell and IBM teaming up, with SuSE – I don’t see how Sun has much of a chance.
Of course, if Novell screws up, Sun would get a lion’s share of the market. But then again, I’m betting on Sun either screwing up or having a focus shift again.
Oh, speaking of OpenOffice – open sourcing it? Bad idea. Look at OpenOffice’s development – the parts actually used by Sun is chiefly being developed by those on Sun’s payroll. It’ll be a bitter irony if Sun would be forced to give up on OpenOffice, while Novell starts making money out of it.
But now that Sun is feeling a big crunch in their bread-and-butter market sectors, everybody and his brother thinks they can run the company better.
I’m not sure I can. But I know that Sun is screwing things up for themselves are whining that Microsoft is spoiling all the fun for them. Thus the reason why I have no pity for them.
http://news.com.com/2009-7339-5087245.html?tag=nl
most of the analysts say Sun has a future,
especially from its N1 initiative and embedded Java.
in the Java side, it could be patent/IP-based revenue model.
for example:
IBM to License Sun Java Chip Core
http://www.internetwk.com/news/news0303-6.htm
and for its SPARC,
Sun still commit to its own chip,
and continue to make it more superior.
from this news:
McNealy To Bet the Company on ‘Corona’ CPU
(a spherical design chip, which all flow distances
are minimized. Sun like to join R&D with Fujitsu and TI)
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/33280.html
it may not easy like a walk in the park,
but imho Sun really has a future (as it always being),
just only if it know how to manage to make money
from its plenty stocks of innovations.
🙂
“Third, forget the linux desktop. Sun is not a desktop software company. Stick to serving, its where the strengths are.”
Without the Desktop there is no Java. That’s why Sun NEEDS Linux on the desktop. Java has no chance of ever being successful if Microsoft controls the OS it runs on.
Also Linux on the Desktop is a future market which will be far more profitable in the long run than Linux on the server. In 5-10 years when most of Asia is using Linux, Sun will have a market to sell their Java to. If they don’t start now then Java is dead.
Yes they could focus only on portables and cellphones, and yes this market is doing well in Asia and Japan also, but theres a fortune that could be made by selling Linux on the desktop. The same fortune Microsoft has now could be made by Sun if they play their cards right with Linux.
“Consider the support it provides to OpenOffice and Mozilla and other OSS projects, the fact that it might become the largest Linux desktop vendor in the world, it’s bringing 3D to the Linux desktop, and is the leading vendor of 64-bit Linux/Opteron low-end servers, and it gets nothing more than spit from much of the Linux community. What’s the point???”
They get a free complete OS with DE and lot of other apps which they can then sell, and since Solaris was a never a serious contender on the desktop. True, Sun’s help is invaluable, but they’re getting more out of the deal than they are giving. Just look at their recent deal with the Chinese, and now Walmart.
In the server market, where Sun makes most of its money – Sun have been flip-flopping in this market for a long time. While its chief competitors HP and IBM have been giving a rather consistent roadmap, however nobody can say for sure that Sun would stick to a product line and direction for long.
What happens if Sun completely changes Solaris for Linux? Or They completely replace Linux for Solaris? What happens if Sun decides that SPARC is useless? Nobody knows. What most people know is that Sun is too inconsistent that anything can happen.
I wouldn’t say HP has a consitent road map. One day it is PA-RISC next it is Itanium for highend 64-bit and xeons for lowend. The other it’s opteron, xeon, itanium PA-Risc and Alpha. Ibm first decides to make linux a top marketing tactic, they support opteron and then also want to make powerpc machines in lowend markets. So they have opteron , intel based and powerpc on the lowend and moving away from AIX on power to linux on Power, what about customers with AIX.
Sun has never once hinted it would abandon SPARC or solaris in favor of linux on intel on the other hand IBM and HP have abandoned thier own for linux and intel in some cases. Don’t talk about what happen’s If? Talk about facts known today.
And speaking with their relationship with Microsoft, the way they acted with Java makes me think that they believe that they are doing Microsoft a favour by allowing them to implement Java. Probably they are ignorant and stupid, but Microsoft is the dominant player and monopoly in the desktop market. Instead of letting Microsoft participate in the development of Java and give some flexiblity to Microsoft, they dictate terms as if Java was so important that Windows would fail without it.
Java is not only a desktop technology. There are more devices running java (1.5 billion) than desktops running Windows not to mention servers. My past two phones have supported java (nextel bought in 2001 and my nokia 3620) the last I checked Dell, and HP MS will offer Sun’s JVM with windows upgrades too (some newsforge article mentioned it).
There is nothing wrong with you having no pity for Sun.
the last I checked Dell, and HP MS will offer Sun’s JVM with windows upgrades too (some newsforge article mentioned it).
should be
The last I checked Dell, and HP have signed up to ship Sun’s JVM on thier desktops and MS will offer Sun’s JVM with windows upgrade too (some newsforge article mentioned it).
McNealy To Bet the Company on ‘Corona’ CPU
(a spherical design chip, which all flow distances
are minimized. Sun like to join R&D with Fujitsu and TI)
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/33280.html
This looks like an April fools joke on linux insider.
“SGI could have been much more of a company if they never put off development of Irix/Mips and never put their bets on worthless Itanic. Their flirtations with MS and Itel took them basically nowhere. If they could hold their ground in the past with Irix/Mips, SGI’s present and future could have been much brighter.”
I agree itanic is worthless, but the problem with Irix/Mips is that it is very expensive to do R&D, and it is unclear whether SGI could recoup R&D expenses through economies of scale.
I would recommend that SGI (a) go with PowerPC, since the R&D of PowerPC could have been split over IBM, Apple, Motorola, and SGI.
or
(b) SGI go with Opteron, since the R&D of Opteron could be split by the PC economies of scale.
personally, going with windows NT makes SGI another clone company, and forces them to compete with low-margin high volume players like Dell. Since SGI is supposed to be value-added niche player in MULTIMEDIA, i would suggest BeOS over NT.
SGI could also leverage BeOS into (a) the IA market, (b) the handheld device market, as Palm is doing with Palm 6,
(c) even the PC desktop market, like redhat and suse.
arrrrggghhhh!! -_-”
thanks .. <(-_-“)> –(oh no!)
>> Sun Makes more money selling Solaris on SPARC than Linux on anything. Can you prove the common knowledge that sun can’t fund development of SPARC for breakthrough performance??
Yes, look at ANY CPU performance chart.
For a company that prides itself on the high end, Sun does not have a competitive high performance CPU offering and it does not appear that one is arriving anytime soon.
>> Sun has a future,
especially from its N1 initiative and embedded Java.
Rebuttal: JINI
Your move.
Yes, look at ANY CPU performance chart.
For a company that prides itself on the high end, Sun does not have a competitive high performance CPU offering and it does not appear that one is arriving anytime soon.
Ok so SPEC performance indicates long term viability???? What about Alpha then it must be the most ubiquitous cpu right, it was leagues ahead of it’s time on SPEC benchmarks, where is it’s market now?
How do you know Sun doesn’t have any new CPUs coming out that won’t be performance competitive, do you have insider information on Sun’s roadmap?
Anyway here are a few articles on what is to come from Sun in the CPU front.
Sun to discuss next-generation ‘Rock’ chip
http://news.com.com/2100-1006_3-5157036.html
Sun adds Rock to its UltraSparc roadmap
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/02/12/HNsunrock_1.html
High-End doesn’t always mean highest performance. High-End also means reliability and scalability at every level. Customers who buy large high-end systems usually put reliability over performance. There are many markets in the world and not just PCs with games and HPTC. Finiancial markets were running IBM cpus and programs designed in the 1950’s and 60s well into the 90s becuause the were well tested and reliable. Remember the y2k scare caused by cobol programs, VAX still has a huge market. But I guess the real world and data centers are not like your PCs which get upgraded every year/month.
JINI, every company has projects that fail to see the light of day. Remember MS Bob and webtv. There are numerous OSS out there that aren’t as popular as linux and mozilla that have eventually died or will die, So should we say OSS is doomed.
Lucian: Without the Desktop there is no Java. That’s why Sun NEEDS Linux on the desktop. Java has no chance of ever being successful if Microsoft controls the OS it runs on.
By time Linux reaches a point where it becomes a major desktop player, .NET would be out there in all its glory. But there’s no Java outside of the desktop market? J2ME is having major success in the embedded market, especially with smartphones.
Lucian: Also Linux on the Desktop is a future market which will be far more profitable in the long run than Linux on the server. In 5-10 years when most of Asia is using Linux, Sun will have a market to sell their Java to.
Tell me, how does JDS promise to be more profitable, than say, JES? Oh, yeah, the incorrect assumption that Asia would dump Windows and jump for Linux in just a mere 5-10 years. BTW, China’s main reason for using Linux over Windows isn’t cost (look at their growing budget deficit, obviously they don’t care much about cost), rather privacy. They are scared there are backdoors where NSA/FBI/CIA can use to spy on China.
Lucian: but theres a fortune that could be made by selling Linux on the desktop.
Then why isn’t anyone making fortunes? I’m sorry, making a stupid prediction such as “In 5-10 years when most of Asia is using Linux” doesn’t make it ultra-profitable.
Raptor: I wouldn’t say HP has a consitent road map.
Come to think of it, I wouldn’t either….
Raptor: Java is not only a desktop technology.[…]
Not my point. My point was that they wanted Microsoft to adopt Java, yet at the same time doing it completely under their terms. Thus the reason for the lawsuit that created the settlement which created news that created this thread.
Raptor: The last I checked Dell, and HP have signed up to ship Sun’s JVM on thier desktops and MS will offer Sun’s JVM with windows upgrade too (some newsforge article mentioned it).
Microsoft isn’t using Sun’s JVM, rather under the settlement, they can make updates to their own VM with the help of Sun. Perhaps SP2 would come with Sun’s JVM until Microsoft’s own gets updated – who knows? Funny Apple didn’t force Microsoft to include Quicktime in their settlement too…
Anonymous: personally, going with windows NT makes SGI another clone company, and forces them to compete with low-margin high volume players like Dell. Since SGI is supposed to be value-added niche player in MULTIMEDIA, i would suggest BeOS over NT.
LOL. It’s bad enough they once choosed NT over IRIX, you want them to choose BeOS over IRIX? That’s pretty much. Just because BeOS could play multiple .mov files at the same time, it is not even comparable with IRIX. Take for example, its file system. In IRIX-replacement Linux, they use their own ported file system, however on BeOS, they have to use ultra-slow BFS. Sure, the metadata idea was a fine one, but how exactly is that going to help SGI’s customers?
Linux was the best solution to replace IRIX.
Anonymous: SGI could also leverage BeOS into (a) the IA market, (b) the handheld device market, as Palm is doing with Palm 6,
(c) even the PC desktop market, like redhat and suse.
SGI is a niche market player whose markets aren’t even remotely connected to the utter failure IA flop, or the PDA market, or even the desktop market.
Raptor: Ok so SPEC performance indicates long term viability???? What about Alpha then it must be the most ubiquitous cpu right, it was leagues ahead of it’s time on SPEC benchmarks, where is it’s market now?
Compaq, later HP executives thought that Itanium would be a wee better idea and decided to sell most of Alpha’s IP to Intel.
Compaq, later HP executives thought that Itanium would be a wee better idea and decided to sell most of Alpha’s IP to Intel.
I know that. All I was pointing out to “blah” was SPEC benchmarks aren’t indicators of an architectures longterm viability or a company’s financial capabilites in funding new processor development. Alpha is the classic example of that.
Also Itanium does extremely well on benchmarks. By the “performance is what market wants” rationale Itanium would be the best seilling chip today, but it isn’t. Markets want a lot more than just raw performance. Two extremely good benchmarking chips aren’t really great sellers.
Actually servers with UltraSPARC IIIi chips from sun the v240 and v210 sold more units in two quarters than Itanium2 last year. This is one company’s two products versus an entire ecosytem built on itanium.
Only counting two of Sun’s products with the chip, Sun shipped more than 24,000 of its V210 and V240 servers. Over two quarters, that means Sun has out-shipped the entire Itanium ecosystem by about 2.5x and done so with just two servers.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/61/34405.html
Sun stock was never declared a junk bond. Nothing of the sort even exists. Some debt instruments were rated junk by some idiot who couldn’t be bothered to do his homework, but the stock is fine (relative to the “penny stock” class).
I do agree that SPARC is a dead end. I’ve believed it was a stupid path for Sun to take since it was first created. It’s a (poor) artifact of the “I gotta be me (and do my own RISC chip)” era.
Solaris is great on the ia-32 processors (and Opteron support is coming), but Sun can’t seem to pull its head out and quit sqandering development assets on Linux toy apps. With intelligent marketing and better hardware support Solaris could have a great future. But then there’s Schwartz…
I believe Schwartz is an imbecile that’ll wreck the company – his track record on sound investments is horrible and he appears to have no (real) love for Solaris. With his latest promotion it should take him only a few years to tear the whole thing down.
German online mag Spiegel made a very valid point as to why this might seriously hurt any Microsoft competition – a point I have yet to see being made elsewhere:
SUN was the primary supplier of expertise and expert opinion for any legal antitrust action against Microsoft.
And I doubt that there is any chance that Microsoft’s dominance can ever be broken in the market, Open Source or not.
And don’t count on RedHat et al…. look at their financial reports, and make a quick calculation how long they can withstand Microsoft when, now more or less rid of legal threats, they start focussing on the backbone of Linux – the companies making money from it.
Microsoft probably has the financial power to wipe out all Linux vendors providing commercial support in one sweep. What then?