Sun Microsystems president and COO Jonathan Schwartz is in Sydney to meet with government and corporate clients. His outspoken, maverick views frequently put him at odds with his competitors as Computerworld’s Rodney Gedda discovered in an interview yesterday.
Sun’s COO Jonathon Schwartz speaks Openly
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Eugenia Loli
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Jonathan has also updated his blog with some comments from Sydney as well – http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20041011#kangaroo_is_deli…
yikes some quotes in there are horrible, take a read.
Hi,
Pretty good read – I may not agree with everything Schwartz says (or his stupid pony tail look *grin*), but if some of the brainless trolls on osnews actually bothered to read the articles given, rather than regurgitaing (read: copy and paste) some sun-bashing rant they’ve seen, they might realise that Scwartz comes across as fairly intelligent.
Sun doesn’t hate Linux – far from it (though it does* hate RH). Also, all this crap about about Novell and IBM being better friends of the OSS movement is just that, crap. Scwartz is probably pushing it a bit by saying they’re first, but Sun is definitely number 2, behind Berkely. OO (and don’t give me that crap about it being mostly coded by open-source developers – the overwhelming majority of the code was written by, and still is, by Sun employees), Gnome, Java (some will complaint that the license isn’t GPL, whine, sniffle, whine, sniffle), NIS+/NFS (which are *not* dead), HIG etc.
Or just check out the projects list at http://www.sunsource.net.
Bye,
Victor
I’d like to see Sun incorporate a true Linux start up, and than GPL Java and Solaris, and than push it’s hardware and it’s Linux vendor. This would put a big hole in the side of Microsoft and the money would come pouring out. I can’t see them winning many wars by force alone.
The fact that they probably are no2 regarding OSS contributions and still have this bad image, says a lot. Problem is that all of the other corporations mentioned have very clear OSS strategy (at least in what they are presenting to public), and Sun always finds a way to screw up and confuse people. Schwartz and McNealy leading the way. I mean, if I was mr. Schwartz, I would be extremely concerned that on every damn interview I give, I end up explaining that Sun is no2. It’s just so embarrassing. If you are a regular reader of his blog, he spends an extraordinary amount of time fighting alleged missinterpretations of his words and ideas. One very interesting thing happened just few days ago; Schwartz explaining in his blog how he and Sun adore and value software patents as a means of a protection of multibillion stockholder investment in Sun’s intellectual property, the very same day when evangelist Simmon Phips urged european Linux users to stand up and confront EU patent laws which are trying to copy US patent system. That kind of situations leave even me unsure of Suns real agenda, and I do know about their every OSS effort, including some not so visible like STSF and Glow for example.
Sun, and Schwartz, should be much clearer in their messages, or better yet, they should stop talking so much.
Victor,
Back up a bit.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Besides, how would you know who is reading or not reading whatever?
Think about it… there are all sorts of Linux, Sun, Microsoft, HP, IBM etc. bashers/lovers out there… big deal. No company or solution is perfect.
The point is that people get tired of CEO’s like Schwartz whine. Kind of like how you sounded in your post.
That’s my opinion.
p.s. Keep in mind that Schwartz is more than “fairly intelligent”, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s transparent. Just like any fading celeb does when they need a career boost, they turn to sensationalism and controversy. It’s sales 101 all the way.
“Now the licence we use is going to be OSI (Open Systems Interconnect)-approved ”
ummm, I believe that means: Open Source Initiative.
I think you’ll find that that expansion of OSI was probably the author, not Jonathan. Note the comment down the bottom of the article…
This transcript has been edited for clarity
Besides, isn’t the more important informatin here that it *will* be OSI compliant?
Alan.
Btw, the man mentioned Red Hat 33 times in this interview. Irritating, isn’t it? It’s an aftereffect of 2bil$ deal with MS; giving Linux a face, and destroying it. But, I thought that this kind of aggressive strategy is considered wrong, I haven’t seen this kind of behaviour in IT sales for at least 5 years. It is just contraproductive. I mean, giving so much space to a company with 700 employees? I really don’t get it. 700 people are giving you so much trouble that you must mention them on every subject, in every sentence? It IS sales 101 all the way. It even has a damn “third person story” in it (that little “problem-newsgroup solution” incident is also in every Schwartz interview since 2bil cached). I wouldn’t surprise me if mr. Schwartz would be trying to touch my knee oh hand while making a sale, just to make more intimate contact. Damned be used car salesmens and their little tricks.
Sun is resigned to beating a dead horse and trying to make it run. Like I said before, someone should shoot them.
Sun is going the SCO route, they were given money by Microsoft in a lawsuit but they continue along a flawed strategy that was failing in the first place.
Please take away open office and whatever else you supposedly gave to OSS. Take it and shove it, if it’s not GPL’ed software than it’s not a contribution.
I feel like they do open source software for the wrong reasons and that they insult a lot of people in interviews.
I don’t understand the specific and targeted attacks on Red Hat, a company he describes as putting a brand name on a box. He refuses to talk about a diffuse social movement, Linux, but rather about the companies that deliver Linux solutions. Well, guess what, Sun is a company that delivers Solaris solutions. And for every company that delivers computing platforms based on open source kernels and toolchains, another can and will spring up in competition.
Any company that delivers a Linux solution is a competitor for Sun. Apparently IBM hasn’t learned its lesson and chooses to compete as a service provider reliant on companies such as Red Hat. And HP has chosen to fight an uphill battle against Dell and Wall-Mart for the retail market. But for every Red Hat there is a Novell, and Sun’s focus on Red Hat alone belies the fact that it is not ready compete if and when there are more of them.
There are many different ways to fail at the platforms game. IBM licensed the PC empire to Microsoft. Compaq let go of Alpha. HP turned its back on HP-UX. Microsoft suffers from horrible PR. Dell’s supply chain is cast in reinforced concrete.
Sun’s tragic flaw is that they’re convinced their different. For someone so obsessed with creating value from a commodity, it is ironic that Mr. Schwartz will find there is no value in a commodity software platform when all the customers really want the same capabilities and services. First “free” meant “free as in beer,” then it meant $1000 per CPU, now it means $795 per CPU. Soon enough Wal-Mart will be selling a Unix-like software platform, end-to-end, for $19.72 per CPU, hoping you’ll widen their margins by buying diapers and propane while you’re there.
No, in order to create value in a marketspace that has become commoditized, they need to be different. I still marvel at the ability of the automotive industry to somehow escape the commoditization of the passenger car. While most people use this product to transport themselves and a few others from one place to another, there are many who are willing to spend 40,000 for a BMW when they could spend 12,000 on a Hyundai and still achieve all of their transportation needs. I guess what I’m saying is that Sun’s servers should feature the computing equivalent of fully-independent double-wishbone suspension.
Corporations that control the entire system in their product line force the customer into the position of a renter rather than an owner. Differentation in the automobile industry is a solution to commodity cars, but in software, the customer doesn’t control the product, unlike with a car, where you drive that car until it dies, and than sell it.
GPL software is owned by individuals that make up a community, but vendor products are owned by vendors and rented out to customers. This industry has issues with customer rights, it’s a centralized system.
when it comes to x86 systems we are building everything but the microprocessor
So do they design their own mobos?
So do they design their own mobos?
Yes, I believe they do, but please don’t quote me on that.
Michael
http://phantasyrpg.com/main.php?view=9898
I think HP has got a bank in Bolivia that has moved some 15-year-old Sun server to a new Windows box and HP calls that claiming a Sun customer. So I’d love to see the detail. We’d be happy to provide you with the details of the 250 HP customers that we’ve migrated with the HP Away program.
HP claiming it still supports HP-UX yet it not ONLY cuts the number of engineers working on it, they *ALSO* cut the amount of money spent on R&D; sorry, thats *NOT* smart.
What has SUN done? ah, thats right, right now there are coders in China and India, along with their American counter parts going gang busters getting Solaris 10 x86 up to speed; drivers, drivers and more drivers are being produced every day, which is a damn site more than I can say for the direction that HP has taken HP-UX in.
First they stop working with GNOME on HP-UX, they then cut the R&D budget and head count, they then cut PA-RISC, which was a very good architecture IMHO, and the last nail in the box was its move to Itanium. Heck, that doesn’t go into their lack-there-of improving their shoddy printers, PC’s and other grab-bag of products; Jon has it right, HP is trying to be Dell, the only thing that he got wrong; Dells products are actually reliable!
Dells products are actually reliable!
You jest, no?
So we believe we are at the beginning of one of the single biggest competitive windows in the history of Sun where we can now begin pricing and evolving technology in a way that neither HP nor IBM can possibly keep up with, because they have foolishly taken a short cut with ‘let’s throw away our operating system’ in the hope of pursuing a partnership with Red Hat which I think is great for Red Hat. I just wonder what it does for HP or IBM.
ROFLMAO if he believes this statement he is in for a rude awakening. I don’t understand how SUN who has been getting their butts kicked for the past few years by their main competitors(HP and IBM) while they foolishly competed with Microsoft i might add. expect to all of a sudden corner the market on Unix with x86 based servers. Case #1 SGI basically did the same thing the cut R&D on their excellent MIPS line and dabbled in the crowded x86 market..have you seen SGI’s stock prices lately? A once great company known for having the fastest CAD machines on the planet reduced to nothing. Expect to see SUN go down the same road if they keep this attitude.
First of all you can’t use Linux in the room with me. You have to identify the distro and the company that’s delivering it. Linux is a wonderful concept [but] customers don’t buy concepts, they buy products from companies.–ARTICLE
butters (IP: —.RES.cmu.edu):
He refuses to talk about a diffuse social movement
Because in corporations there is no social movement. They buy products. The fact the production process has changed matters very little. After all when was the last time a large company got it’s kernel directly from Kernel.org ?
Are you confident you won’t get a few phone calls from Darl McBride of the SCO group saying you can’t open source Solaris?
We’re very confident we own the intellectual property necessary to pursue whatever business objective we identify. Very confident. **And in an odd way a lawsuit from SCO would probably do more to establish our street cred in the open source community.**
Man, that is so true. Maybe they should pay SCO to sue them…
When does Schwartz _not_ speak openly?!
Hmm, this is the company (Sun) that required customers to sign a ‘gag contract’ before they would fix a major hardware problem with their systems because they could not handle the embarrassment of having their shoddy engineering and poor QA practices exposed to the world?
If Schwartz wants to start slinging mud (e.g some anecdotal ‘newsgroup’ incident), theres plenty that will stick to Sun.
Anyway, the point that Schwartz seems to have missed here is that the Redhat customer has actually realised one of the huge benefits of open source – with a little effort and some help from friendly people on the net, you can do your own support as well as anybody (Including the vendor) can.
The only difference between Redhat and Sun in this respect is that Sun don’t dare make their support newsgroups public.
And he also fails to mention that if the customer is not happy with this, they can simply elect to stop paying for the support and continue to use the product (e.g. White Box Linux).
Just shut up about RedHat, and talk about Sun. Nobody buys this ‘Give Linux a face and then beat it up’ – RedHat is popular because it is Linux – and because if RedHat makes you mad, you can go down the road and find a compatible OS at relatively no cost.
If youre a Solaris customer, and Sun make you angry, what do you suggest the customer does for a Solaris-compatible product?
Someone had to become the defacto ‘corporate Linux standard’ – and that can and will change overnight if RedHat fail to bear the standard in the manner that the corporate IT community demands. Sun can yell and scream all they want about how much RedHat sucks, but really, why not just get the mythical Solaris 10 out the door before Linux 3.0 wipes the floor with it.
Sun is as much a reseller of x86 boxes as HP or IBM are. They are selling rebadgeed Newisys machines, but calling HP ‘s business sense into question for doing the same thing.
Schwartz must live in some kind of freaky fantasy world where he thinks that people see the blatant hypocrisy that he preaches as truth.
When does Schwartz _not_ speak openly?!
Better question. When does Schwartz stand behind the same facts twice in a row?
Too bad he doesn’t allow comments on (in, under…) his blog articles. I bet at least half of the OSNews community would go and… comment their heart away there!
The guy is agressive, I am giving him that…. But his mouth is always full of … Red Hat. Honestly, I think that Schwartz and Sun sees Red Hat as hard competition. As far as Open Source and Linux goes, Red Hat has a strategy, but Sun doesn’t. Red Hat is also one of the biggest OSS contributors out there. Theire Fedora distro isn’t bad at all, and IMHO it’ s a far better strategy to give a good quality distro to the community, that other Linux companies have. After all, most people in the OSS community want inovation and new technologies to play with. And for those who don’t have the money to pay, there is always Debian. Debian it’s being used in the enterprise. Heck, even Slackware is being used, especially by ISPs. But it’s clear now where Sun is going: they don’t want to give up on Solaris, it’s clear now that they want Solaris and not Linux. And probably at some point Schwartz is right, because at the end of the day Solaris and Java are Sun’s identity. They are Sun’s business. If sun would ditch Solaris and go with Linux, it would be just another Linux company in the Shadows of Red Hat. As far as Java is concerned, I can see that most of the OSS community will sooner adopt Mono than Java, despite all the fears that Microsoft might get up one day and turn against Mono. They hesitate to Open Source Java, because they don’t know how to profit from it. The IT business has become more complex, and so it’s hard to formulate a strategy for a product like Java this days. If they would have provided a good development environment for Java from day one, and improved on it, to make it something like .NET, then they could have made allot of money of it. I think that it’s way toooooo late now. As far as that comment goes, about the customer paying Red Hat $1500 for support for a 2 way system, I think it’s bogus. Red Hat won’t just post a customers question to a forum, that’s insane. That customer could have easely went to the Better Business Bureau saying “Hey, I’ve payed for a product which wasn’t delivered to me…”, which means that he payied for support which wasn’t granted to him. Or he could have dragged Red Hat to court. Nope, I don’t believe it’s true. Heck, even I’ve talked to core Red Hat developers on Freenode and they helped me out with Fedora. My conclussion is that Sun doesn’t have a clear strategy yet, they are like the blind man claiming that he can see, and that they are strugleling. The echonomical changes in the market will crush Sun, unless they will adapt. Heck, they don’t even know yet how to open source Solaris so that it won’t become the next Linux like OS. But I don’t think that OSS developers will spend to much time on it anyway. We don’t need to reinvent the weel, even if Solaris turns out to be technologically superiour. And not to forget, Project Looking Glass. They didn’t know what to do with it, so they’ve Open Sourced it, which ain’t a bad thing, but I don’t think that people spend allot of time on it. They could have finished it and integrated it into their Java Desktop System together with Gnome, so they have a reason to call a Suse hack “Java Desktop System”. My definition of Sun would be: A company with good ideas that doesn’t know how to market them and that also doens’t always finish what it started. It’s also a company with lack of marketing vission and no, they are not careful about what their saying in public.
stupid. Your stupid. Telling open office to shove it is retarded.
get a damn life. Whats wrong with people submitting code to the open source community? I don’t see the linux kernel group having protections against patents. Oh wait I can’t even bring that into it or I’ll get shot in the head by some of you mindless crazy people. Let’s go harass a company that is actually releasing open source, yeah that will make thing ALOT better. Why in the hell would someone take a linux distro and try to make money on it? Sun builds operating sytems they don’t take OTHER PEOPLES software and package it together and put a pretty name on it.
BLAHHHH you act like gw bush
I guess we should take away free speech. So many peopel are telling other people to shut up and how they shoudl stop saying this and that.
Lets put a huge filter on everything any exec says and shoot them down for it. … god im so mad right now
[quote]So we believe we are at the beginning of one of the single biggest competitive windows in the history of Sun where we can now begin pricing and evolving technology in a way that neither HP nor IBM can possibly keep up with, because they have foolishly taken a short cut with ‘let’s throw away our operating system’ in the hope of pursuing a partnership with Red Hat which I think is great for Red Hat. I just wonder what it does for HP or IBM.[/quote]
ROFLMAO if he believes this statement he is in for a rude awakening. I don’t understand how SUN who has been getting their butts kicked for the past few years by their main competitors(HP and IBM) while they foolishly competed with Microsoft i might add. expect to all of a sudden corner the market on Unix with x86 based servers. Case #1 SGI basically did the same thing the cut R&D on their excellent MIPS line and dabbled in the crowded x86 market..have you seen SGI’s stock prices lately? A once great company known for having the fastest CAD machines on the planet reduced to nothing. Expect to see SUN go down the same road if they keep this attitude.
Please, here are some corretions:
1/ SGI doesn’t design MIPS processors, they spun it off many years ago, MIPS is now a stand alone company – SGI mearly purchases MIPS processors.
2/ SGI sold workstations loaded with Windows at twice the market price – not a smart move, would you purchase a workstaion at twice the market price simple because of the SGI mystic? I certainly wouldn’t. Compare prices; IBM Opteron systems vs. SUNs Opteron systems. Compare it to Dells pricing as well.
SUNs workstation and servers are priced either on the mark or below what the competitors price theirs at. That is why there is a MASSIVE difference between SUN and SGI.
3/ Getting the “asses kicked” is a mistake if I ever saw one; they’re getting their asses kicked by the x86 market NOT by IBM, HP or Dell. The difference between Dell, HP, IBM and SUN; Sun was late to the x86 server and workstation party. Just wait and see; when SUN’s x86-64 workstation and server shipments pick up, you’ll see SUN back into profitability and thus, will no longer have to fully rely on SPARC sales to make ends meet – they’ll not only have services but software and x86 hardware as well.
About the *only* thing that *would* be a good move, would be for SUN to purchase Sybase, integrate it well with the rest of the SUN ONE stack and include it as part of the $100 per-employee package – heck, to spur it faster – offer one year free, a three year contract, first year free. That would be great value for money.
why are people defending red hat? someone who takes open source code and puts in a pretty package and then puts limits on that package?
does it not seem biased? Is it just that their main product have linux beside it’s name?
Weird, Sun has contributed more to open source than redhat has EVER done. I see ALOT of GPL’d software released by sun and I think its a disgrace for members of this community to distance themselves from a company full of open source supporters, just go to blogs.sun.com and you will see plenty of open source supporters.
It’s a disgrace that some want the community to fragment just because 2 companies are competing.
Why must people get in the middle of competetion of businesses? deep down you know its about the software not the package or the company, its about the contributors.
Sure, Novell supports patents while keeping software open.. sure IBM has contempated going after patents that would shut the linux kernel down (According to a news article) Sure IBM owns alot of the patents that if they got in the hands of microsoft would shut down alot of open source software organizations….
I mean damn, why are some people fixed on HATE so much?
As for Redhat I think people, like myself, respect them so much because they give so much back. Sure they have there own brand of Linux with certain differences but it’s hardly enough differences to warrant it proprietary (not even close). Has Sun given more? I sure wouldn’t know but what Redhat has, for the most part, it gives back to the community. Look at their recent purchase of Netscape server stuff, all open sourced. Look at their stance on patents? All about giving back. Redhat does not deserve the crap that the get in a lot of cases. Unlike so many other companies Redhat is, from it roots, a Linux company that has adopted a lot of the open source culture. You don’t like the high cost of RHEL then too bad. It’s not for you anyway, it’s for enterprises. Just get debian or something, no matter what you go with it’s almost doubtless you’ll in some way be benefitting from RH’s contributions.
Sun has been a great contributor, there is simply no doubting this (I could thank them everyday for Oo). But, as mentioned, the community doesn’t know half the time whether to love them or fear them. I certainly found Schwartz’s comments on Patents a little scary and baffling (considering they just ponied up so much to Kodak).
Your right, I think software patents are stupid. Novell and sun both support them. Red Hat says they will register patents and use their patents to protect the open source community, which i respect and they have respected it. (according to their patent promise)
But what if a red hat get’s purchased by a larger company? what if some new CEO gets in there and goes insane? Would it not be more safe to have the patents donated to a nonprofit organization?
As for sun with patents, your right they will probably register them but they won’t use it to litigate… Same policy as red hat has, except sun hasn’t said it clearly enough, but i work closely with sun therefore i know and that’s why i get so angry at some of the comments. They are aiming for some type of return for doing open source work or whatever to their investors who spend millions on funding such work, most greedy businessmen want some type of return.
I believe patents of red hat or sun or any of the company whom supports open sourcea nd those patents are on open source software should be donated to an organization and under contract cannot be used to litigate but protect.
Sun’s comments on patents are kind of like a politician, they haven’t made it clear enough nor have they felt the need to.
that’s my take.
to their stance. Or if it can easily be changed later on. The good news is, while not huge, RH is big enough that a buy out is becoming less likely all the time. Furthermore, as I understand, RH’s employee’s would be so against a move that many would quit. I say that referencing something said about them by their CEO I belive (which doesn’t mean it’s true). People like Havoc, however, who is one of their most influential employee’s, would no doubt leave (that’s my opinion but I believe it’s pretty educated).
I agree with you though, that sounds like a good idea.
Please, here are some corretions:
1/ SGI doesn’t design MIPS processors, they spun it off many years ago, MIPS is now a stand alone company – SGI mearly purchases MIPS processors.
2/ SGI sold workstations loaded with Windows at twice the market price – not a smart move, would you purchase a workstaion at twice the market price simple because of the SGI mystic? I certainly wouldn’t. Compare prices; IBM Opteron systems vs. SUNs Opteron systems. Compare it to Dells pricing as well.
SUNs workstation and servers are priced either on the mark or below what the competitors price theirs at. That is why there is a MASSIVE difference between SUN and SGI.
3/ Getting the “asses kicked” is a mistake if I ever saw one; they’re getting their asses kicked by the x86 market NOT by IBM, HP or Dell. The difference between Dell, HP, IBM and SUN; Sun was late to the x86 server and workstation party. Just wait and see; when SUN’s x86-64 workstation and server shipments pick up, you’ll see SUN back into profitability and thus, will no longer have to fully rely on SPARC sales to make ends meet – they’ll not only have services but software and x86 hardware as well.
1. I know this thanks! its the reason i said MIPS line meaning MIPS based products.
2. Doesn’t matter what the price was. the point is they bet the farm on x86 and lost when they should have contiue building faster MIPS boxes. Why would i buy a SUN x86 box when i can buy HP, DELL, IBM, etc.. etc.. to run x86 Solaris? I doubt SUN can keep prices below Dells for long.
3. Asses kick(ed) past tense the damage is done. x86 never competed with big iron Unix boxes ever. x86 for Windows and PA-RISC, SPARC, RS/6000 and in the past Alpha for Unix. I do hope the best for SUN and their x86 market however i don’t believe they can obtain the same greatness that they once had with Sparc.
None needed
Besides, isn’t the more important informatin here that it *will* be OSI compliant?
Absolutely. Good luck.
RedHat guarantees it doesn’t sue (so-called defensive patent) when the software which ‘uses’ the patent is OSI compatible.