With his management team reshuffled, Sun’s president and chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz sat down again with eWEEK’s Steve Gillmor to discuss Sun’s contributions to the open-source community, the Sun-MS deal’s impact on DRM, identity management and visual development tools, and the strategic role of Sun’s auto-update technology in the emerging real-time enterprise platform.
Sun’s Schwartz on JDS, DRM, Auto-Update
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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You should ask for an interview with schwartz Eugenia, i bet he will accept it. He replies to shareholder’s e-mails i know.
It’s just that eWEEK happens to be down right atm, maybe for a db sync. Check again soon.
oh ok thanks 😉 I was looking forward to sun’s attempts to reverse the sun bashing news
Good interview. It seems that going by what schwartz said, they’ve put their Microsoft hating days asside and realise that the customer doesn’t *care* about the technology, they care about the results. If the result is the same using a cheaper system, then they’ll move.
Lets hope that they stay on track and focus on delivery a true alternative to the Microsoft hegemony.
Is it just me or is Sun really reinventing the “push becomes shove” concept? Web services that push information are fine between two (business) partners that trust each other, but it doesn’t work for the internet in general.
In bed with MS with “DRM authenticated USERS” plus “push-shove tehnology” concept bundled with fictional comeback to Solaris, some IP bullshit, and a little pissing on IBM/HP’s Linux strategy. Yeah, I sure can see an “alternative” to windows here. God, what a wrong path they are taking.
6 comments..No Sun Haters yet?
Anyways, I was wondering whether the patent benefits would be used for JDS/Linux, or only for Solaris, so this is good news IMO. Whoever thinks that qualifies as a “failure” is Stupid. I can’t really think of a better word than that(maybe Schwartz’s: Naive). Unless, of course, one considers “making money” as a “failure”, because that’s exactly what Sun will do.
Good article. Looks like Sun is going to use the MS licensed software to enhance their products. Both the Solaris brand and the Linux brand. When you throw in Star Office and MS Office compatibility, Sun will have the best UNIX/Linux/Office windows compatible offerings out there.
How anyone could construe Sun’s MS deal as not a huge win for Sun is beyond me.
The deal also has no effect on Linux, except to make Sun’s JDS the most compatible Linux available.
All Sun sees is a sea of winodws boxes connected to their servers.
Oh, yeah, did I mention Sun got $1.95B for their trouble as well?
Brillant.
Sun is possessed by crazy execs. From one extreme, “Microsoft is the Anti-Christ”, now to the opposite extreme, “Microsoft is our friend and ally, if not our Pope”.
Schwartz has worked for Microsoft on the down low for a long time. It will be interesting to see just how fast he makes all of Sun convert to the Microsoft religion. I get the feeling many people will be unhappy very fast at Sun. And that doesn’t include the 10,000 people Schwartz is going to cut over the next 24-36 months.
However, the stock will go up. So keep an eye out and be prepared to dump. In fact, Microsoft will easily make their $2 billion back through savvy play in the market. So the real money that Microsoft put into Sun ends up being next to zero, if not actually a profit.
As always, it is the cunning business practices of Microsoft that rule the world. Sun is just a pawn, playing a game in which it has little power and little choice.
Sun has is so pitiful the Sun bashers feel bad bashing them
Umm..What exactly does that sentence mean?
Sun convert to the Microsoft religion.
There are no religions. Except yours.
I get the feeling many people will be unhappy very fast at Sun.
Feeling?
What protocols did Sun license?
And Sun does seem to have multiple personalities and such. Its weird.
And Sun does seem to have multiple personalities and such. Its weird.
Aint no multiple personalities… Its called business.
I love the newspeak-filled interview. Now there are open source standards and “open standards” to which only Sun and Microsoft have access.
Nobody, repeat nobody, partners with Microsoft and survives. This guy is going to run the company into the ground. I am sick and tired of Sun wrapping itself in Penguin fur when it suits them and spreading FUD the next minute.
I will never buy a server from these assholes again and I will make sure that I publicize my views to my peers as to why. They see all the work of the open source community, not as advancing an open platform, but as profiting from the work of the community by mainting proprietary control of the platform through hooks and gates here and there.
How different from the approach Novell is taking? They have open sourced Yast, they have open sourced iFolder and iPrinter and they are steadfast about moving their own desktops and the whole industry to a new paradigm where the customer has choice because he is not locked into proprietary schemes.
Calling it “business” is simply too simple. If you pay $50 to put your penis inside some hooker that’s called “business” too. Claiming sex is business is too broad; claiming changing (or at least the perceiving of a change of an) opinion is broad as well.
Sun just changed their ways. Instead of saying they hate Microsoft, they only think it now, but don’t say it. That is to say if they still like open standards [which Jonathan confirms on the bottom of page 6 of the article] then they cannot like Microsoft from that point of view. Because Microsoft behaves on non-open standard manners. To name an example.
According to an Anonymous Groklaw post posted by a Sun employee the change of Sun not saying they hate Microsoft anymoore was because customers demanded it.
Whatever it is, there is no question that Sun “doesn’t like” Microsoft over certain aspects while [as Jonathan points out on page 6 of the article] recognizing something in common. I think the reasons they don’t like Microsoft will be more obvious than the reasons the companies do not “hate” each other because the former happenings are more obvious; the conflicts will be more apparent… which is something i perceive to be pretty normal in humanity as a whole.
“How different from the approach Novell is taking? They have open sourced Yast, they have open sourced iFolder and iPrinter and they are steadfast about moving their own desktops and the whole industry to a new paradigm where the customer has choice because he is not locked into proprietary schemes.”
Both Novell and Sun have FLOSSed some of their applications and/or contribute to FLOSS applications. Both Novell and Sun thrived on a proprietary OS (+ apps) before they chose to partly adopt FLOSS. Not everything they develop is FLOSS. Not from both companies. They still develop non-FLOSS applications. In contrast to ie. RedHat.
The difference is most likely statistics in FLOSS vs. no-FLOSS development which i don’t know. Another difference is that FLOSS is a core strategy of Novell whereas Sun is also a hardware company partly and is still improving and marketing Solaris and UltraSPARC and marketing Solaris + UltraSPARC as THE high-end server solution. Novell however, abandoned their NOS NetWare and isn’t marketing NetWare at all. In fact, their Brainshare speeches showed that they still support NetWare but are allowing migrations to their Linux solutions.
Do you really think Novell is gonna open-source all their applications? I can’t predict the future, but it would highly surprise me. Because then a company with better support or some non-FLOSS applications can more easily take over their market. As for Sun… i doubt even more Sun will do that… that goes byond my imagination…
The worst you can do is get into bed with Microsoft, because in that relationship they will always be looking to destroy you. There is not a snowball in hell’s chance of Microsoft letting Sun make Star Office interoperable with Microsoft Office or anything else, even with licensed protocols.
But all that said, if you look at the market for music downloaded on mobile handsets, you measure it in the billions of dollars. If you look at the market for music downloaded on desktop computers, it’s measured comparatively in pennies. Now, why is that?</i
I really hate to disappoint Sun and Microsoft here, but if you start to lock down computers in the way that mobile phones are locked down then you cease to have a computer. People then choose something else. It has happened before.
[i]There’s ample opportunity for us to collaborate there as well as realistically develop the other’s developer bases.
Oh dear.
There are probably 10 million developers in the world, and of those, there’s a very, very small fraction that are Web services developers.
That’s not because web services are difficult – that’s because they are overhyped crap that no one uses.
The majority of people who are content creators are people who carry around digital cameras and these devices for a networked world. You can move up from there to people who create static content—more complicated documents and spreadsheets—and establishing what we’re going after with the StarOffice world.
Pardon? You’re going to charge people who carry around digital cameras and PCs like mobile phone companies do? I can’t see that ever getting off the ground. Quite how StarOffice fits into this is anyone’s guess, but hey – it’s a Sun exec who’s talking.
So, with interoperability and a focus on ease of use, we’re trying to use both StarOffice as well as Java Studio Creator to create a broader market opportunity and add interoperability to that mix. It’s about growing the largest market possible, trying to help build the biggest tent atop all the developers in the world rather than forcing people to go make choices that may preclude their opportunities.
Anyone care to tell me what this load of bollocks means?
The pull model of computing—the days are numbered.
In other words, as an end-user or business you don’t choose. We will push the largest amount of crap imaginable on you, and with Trusted Computing you will just have to sit there and watch it.
They were not a part of the [Sun-Microsoft] announcement, and I think they have left themselves exposed in their zeal to move to Linux. They have failed to recognize that they have simply allowed Red Hat to replace Microsoft as the provider of operating systems for IBM.
So this deal wasn’t about Linux. Anyway, I fail to see how Red Hat is the only provider of Linux – Sun are barking up the wrong tree…well…they’re just barking.
Now that Red Hat is increasingly competing against IBM as well as raising its prices to the point where customers are really beginning to express their dissatisfaction by seeking alternatives—both back to Microsoft as well as to Sun with our Solaris operating environment—suggests that it was a short-sighted decision that said they were going to abandon AIX for Intel and Opteron servers.
Then they’ll move to Novell/Suse, or use Debian or something else. This guy has absolutely no clue. Sorry, but Linux customers are not seeking alternatives. Sun and Microsoft customers, however, are, which of course was the whole point of the agreement.
So, I am very convinced, with Steve, that he who has the most customers—and I would just add developers into that—is ultimately going to be the long-term winner. Companies that believe you can use press releases to curry favor come up short in the long run if they don’t have technology in the network that allows them to reach the marketplace.
This from a company that hasn’t been in the black for years! IBM, Suse, Red Hat and others have customers and lots of them. Sun don’t.
The fact that we’re committed to interoperability means either choice is a safe choice.
You may be committed to interoperability, but Microsoft isn’t. How on Earth do you think they’ve got where they are today?
This company has no direction and no clue – even worse than when they had that stupid Network Computer idea. I don’t know why they persist in fighting Linux. With their UNIX expertise and hardware they could become a real force, and differentiate themselves in ways others can’t to the same degree. No wonder all the good people at the company have left, because Sun are on the road to the hell.
Pardon? You’re going to charge people who carry around digital cameras and PCs like mobile phone companies do? I can’t see that ever getting off the ground. Quite how StarOffice fits into this is anyone’s guess, but hey – it’s a Sun exec who’s talking.
Hunh… I read the same paragraph and understood something completely different. I got the impression that he was saying the market is bigger than desktops dn developers. They target certain markets with StarOffice and the broader market with webservices.
This from a company that hasn’t been in the black for years! IBM, Suse, Red Hat and others have customers and lots of them. Sun don’t.
Redhat, Novell(suse’s parent) have all been in the red along with Sun for the past three years. Check the income statement on yahoo. Except for IBM every company you mentioned is losing money selling linux. IBM makes most of its money in the services sector (50% of thier revenue infact). So if linux hasn’t made redhat go into the black, why would it Sun.
Stop pushing linux for everything. You sound worse than the Sun execs you loathe so much.
Hunh… I read the same paragraph and understood something completely different. I got the impression that he was saying the market is bigger than desktops dn developers.
You’re only skimming the surface of his comments. This actually confirms my comments above. They want to monetize content, in his words. You can’t read that any other way. However, when you look at the profits and revenues of mobile phone companies it certainly isn’t as profitable as people thought, and not as profitable as the IT industry. Besides, I doubt whether mobile and embedded device manufacturers will allow Microsoft and Sun in here. There’s only so much money to go around.
Redhat, Novell(suse’s parent) have all been in the red along with Sun for the past three years. Check the income statement on yahoo. Except for IBM every company you mentioned is losing money selling linux.
Since Linux business is comparitively young, I would imagine that most would have been in the red for some time. Novell certainly has, and they’ve decided to radically change their strategy. Red Hat are now in profit, and the prospects for Novell/Suse and others are good because people are moving to Linux. People using Linux are not moving in the opposite direction to Solaris or Windows – that’s the material point, and Sun can’t accept it. Given that they are a UNIX company it would be very easy for them to take advantage of that, and probably wouldn’t cause them any pain whatsoever. They are flushing their business down the toilet for something that isn’t actually a threat to them as it is to Microsoft.
IBM makes most of its money in the services sector (50% of thier revenue infact).
Durr…that’s the whole point of using Linux.
So if linux hasn’t made redhat go into the black, why would it Sun.
Red Hat is in the black, and for those that aren’t sales are still on the up which means that they have good prospects. Sun are in the red, have very expensive products compared to the opposition, have scrapped good quality budget servers in Cobalt, for example, and have falling sales. I’d say that’s not a good situation for a business
.
Stop pushing linux for everything. You sound worse than the Sun execs you loathe so much.
I’m not pushing Linux for everything – you sound rather desperate on this. I don’t loathe Sun’s executives, but they talk quite a bit of crap and are flushing their business down the toilet. Oh well…
Since Linux business is comparitively young, I would imagine that most would have been in the red for some time. Novell certainly has, and they’ve decided to radically change their strategy. Red Hat are now in profit, and the prospects for Novell/Suse and others are good because people are moving to Linux. People using Linux are not moving in the opposite direction to Solaris or Windows – that’s the material point, and Sun can’t accept it. Given that they are a UNIX company it would be very easy for them to take advantage of that, and probably wouldn’t cause them any pain whatsoever. They are flushing their business down the toilet for something that isn’t actually a threat to them as it is to Microsoft.
Well I am sure they do understand the threat of customers balking to linux. In case you haven’t noticed, Sun does have linux in it’s catlog of systems. JDS is based on SUSE linux.
IBM makes most of its money in the services sector (50% of thier revenue infact).
Durr…that’s the whole point of using Linux.
Hmmm….. can’t quite make that connect for some reason. IBM’s global service will sell anything to it’s customers even Solaris on SPARC.
Red Hat is in the black, and for those that aren’t sales are still on the up which means that they have good prospects. Sun are in the red, have very expensive products compared to the opposition, have scrapped good quality budget servers in Cobalt, for example, and have falling sales. I’d say that’s not a good situation for a business
.
You are grossly uninformed. Sun has cheaper x86 servers running linux than Dell, you really should back up your statements with fact. Please post price lists from the Dell large enterprise website and Sun’s x86 servers to prove your point.
While I agree Sun hasn’t made the best business decisions in the past, your points are not applicable since Sun now also sells x86 hardware and linux at a much more competitive price than Redhat.
Well I am sure they do understand the threat of customers balking to linux. In case you haven’t noticed, Sun does have linux in it’s catlog of systems. JDS is based on SUSE linux.
Do Sun support Linux….? No one actually knows. They still seem to hang onto the coat-tails of Solaris on the server-side, seemingly unaware that Linux makes the Solaris totally redundant. Why are they not running their JDS exclusively on Solaris if they have so much confidence in it?
Hmmm….. can’t quite make that connect for some reason. IBM’s global service will sell anything to it’s customers even Solaris on SPARC.
Well it doesn’t seem to be doing Sun any good, does it?
. IBM’s Global Services are very much geared to selling Intel/IBM or PowerPC servers running Suse/Red Hat Linux. If you insist on Solaris then they will support that, but that situation is becoming increasingly rare.
You are grossly uninformed. Sun has cheaper x86 servers running linux than Dell…
They’ve done this because price pressures have literally forced them to give up on SPARC for everything – something they have never wanted to do. The AMD deal is the smartest thing Sun have done, and Sun needed to push this much, much further rather than striking a stupid, meaningless deal with Microsoft because they are worried about a non-existant threat. As for them being cheaper than Dell – it does depend on what you look at most of the time. There are more hardware producers out there in the world than Dell, and they’re certainly not my favourite. Anyone can quote and compare prices, and do it all night, but ultimately it doesn’t mean anything – Sun are still in trouble. I’d have AMD-based systems any day, but you can get them from more places than just Sun
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…you really should back up your statements with fact.
Like I said, from one day to the next that may or may not be true (and I love AMD systems – I would never buy Dell!), but there are more hardware producers in the world than Dell. Quoting Dell isn’t really good enough.
…your points are not applicable since Sun now also sells x86 hardware and linux at a much more competitive price than Redhat.
That’s all rather immaterial, as Sun are still making huge losses every quarter. Anyway, Red Hat doesn’t sell hardware, and like Sun themselves, you seem to have an incredible fixation with Red Hat. There is Novell/Suse, Red Hat and a number of smaller players all jockying for position. Red Hat is not Linux!. Unfortunately, Sun are not pushing the x86 hardware and Linux enough because they feel that it will hurt Solaris and SPARC, when in reality they don’t at all. Sun need to let go of Solaris. SPARC is fine as their high end hardware, but they need to have a unified vision regarding whether they use Linux across the board, really push it and really push the boat out on their service, support and engineering certifications. Sun could be really successful here and worry Microsoft greatly, but I’m just mystified as to some of the comments in this interview. Maybe that’s why Microsoft struck a deal – because they know Sun always screws up.
I dont’t hate Sun. They have absolutely fantastic hardware, engineers, support and everything else – I’ve seen this first-hand. If they ditched Solaris and really marketed their x86/SPARC systems running Linux exclusively, perhaps partnering with Red Hat, I really think they’d create a massive amount of momentum and mindshare that would pull them out of the rut they’re in – without Microsoft. Come on Sun!! Give us something to believe in and stuff that we all want to buy. No one is anti-Sun, but that is just the reality of the current situation.