[Am-info] After Sun goes out

[Fred A. Miller]

"Sun Microsystems crossed the line from "troubled" to "doomed" 
yesterday. This is sad news for the open-source community, and we need 
to think about how we're going to deal with it. The most pressing 
questions are, "What becomes of Java?" and, "What becomes of 
OpenOffice.org?" These are questions that matter.

Sun's troubles have been mounting for a while. Founder Bill Joy's 
departure was an ominous recent symbol, but the substance of their 
problem is that their hugh-margin server business is being eroded from 
the low end by PCs running Linux at a rate that doesn't leave it much 
of a future. 

Nobody should cheer the prospect of Sun's demise. Sun screwed up some 
major decisions very badly, from wrecking Unix standardization efforts 
in the 1980s to throttling the dream of Java ubiquity by keeping the 
language proprietary. But nobody should forget that Sun was founded by 
Unix hackers for Unix hackers. For most of its lifespan Sun remained 
the archetype of an engineering-driven company. Sun was, mostly, among 
the good guys; to hackers and geeks, disputing with Sun was almost a 
family quarrel. 

But inside Sun, I hear that talent is bailing out of the company because 
they just don't believe the Solaris-will-prevail story management is 
peddling. Most of Sun's techies are running Linux on their PCs at home. 
They can see the handwriting on the wall."

http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/10/02/1240243

-- 
"...Linux, MS-DOS, and Windows XP (also known as the Good, the Bad, and
the Ugly)."