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Co-founder Joy to leave Sun
TheLinuxWarrior writes "An article
at CNET says Bill Joy, Sun Micro co-founder and chief scientist, is leaving the company." You'd think after two decades of working at Sun, they could've found a better picture!
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It's a conspiracy, hear me out before you think I'm off my rocker.
"Sun" has 3 letters, so does "SCO" and "Joy". "Bill" is also the name of some guy at Microsoft.
SCO claims it is making no money (0), there are eight letters in "MICROS~1" (8) and SCO thinks they are the sole owner of UNIX and Linux (1). Apply those numbers to SUN:
rot0 S == S
rot8 U == C
rot1 N == O
That's not all; note how SCO and Sun both start with "S" which looks a lot like a dollar sign? What is the 3rd letter from the right in "MICROS~1"? An "S". 3 companies with "S" in their names, third letter from the right is an "S". S looks like a dollar sign.. you know the inevitable conclusion..
The above facts speak for themselves: Bill Joy is in the pockets of SCO and Microsoft. He's leaving Sun to enjoy his millions of ill-gotten gain.
Don't even think of getting me going on SGI in the equation.
now where is my tin foil hat..
Trolling is a art,
You'd think after two decades of working at Sun, they could've found a better picture!
Geez, The man is a scientist, give him a break. Asking for a good picture of a scientist is like asking for a serious shot of Alf.
I'm tired of bombing the universe
Joe Angry will now step in and fill the vacated spot .
Here's hoping that he founds a new start-up with a guy named "Pride"...
It really is a Joy to leave Sun. ...
Thank you, I'll be here all evening. :-)
:::sound of slashdot crickets:::
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Whatever it is, I'm going to buy stock in it. This guy is a genius, and has truly initiated world-changing technologies. I'm going to be closely watching to see where he goes, because it's going to be impressive.
I wonder, though, what this means for the future of Sun...
You'd think after two decades of working at Sun, they could've found a better picture!
That is the better picture.
You'd think after two decades of working at Sun, they could've found a better picture!
Let's see a good picture of you, Taco.
This guy looks like a GQ model compared to any given slashdot editor.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The other Sun folks probably checked his past history and discovered that he wrote VI. No wonder he's "leaving." ;)
For those who don't know, this is sort of the original founder of BSD.
He wrote the BSD IP stack while at Berkeley (BSD, duh).
Let's hope he works on his terms somewhere and stays away from the business/corporate world.
Lame attempts at humor notwithstanding, I found it a great joy to leave Sun. Though working with Joy up in Aspen would be a fine scenario.
When I started working with SunOS in 1992, I thought that working at the pioneering company would be a great career path. After several years, I finally got there, and was immensely distressed at the culture of "not invented here" and "zero career growth" as unspoken rules. They build lovely campuses to work in, but boy did it suck to be a minion there.
And he was responsible for vi. For this I cannot decide whether he should be praised as a computer great or be disgraced as the author of the greatest horrible-excuse-for-an-editor known to man.
http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~kirkenda/joy84.html
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
How can he be an innovative, impressively accomplished UNIX(r) guy?
HE HAS NO BEARD!!!
do() || do_not();
First Love, now Joy! What's NEXT!?!?
--- Tao
The article says sun was co-founded by Scott mcneally an Bill Joy. Actually there were 4 of them out of which 2 have already quit. So with the third guy on the way out it leaves only Scott behind.
Bill Joy can easily take a lot of credit for Java though
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Here is a cool 20 year old interview with him, written as far as I can see just after the first Mac came out. It makes for interesting reading:
http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~kirkenda/joy84.html
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
:q!
This does not bode well for Sun. Bill Joy was truly a visionary and they are going to have to make significant changes in R&D strategy to compensate for this loss. Note that SUNW stock is reacting accordingly, I expect we'll see $2.80 before the end of '03.
Joy is such a luddite that there really is no threat of him starting another technology company. It's likely he will pursue more writing and pontificating, while Sun will flounder aimlessly as they seek a niche in this new technology market.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
It's unusual for founders to leave like this.
This is probably over a major senior management disagreement. A dispute about the best way for Sun to haul it's ass out of the fire. What other subject would they have time to talk about at Sun HQ? McNealy is schitzophrenic, one day he's wearing a penguin suit the next day he's funding SCO's fud campaign against Linux to slow down SUN's haemorraging bottom line.
I guess Bill was on the losing side. The last few things I have read in the trade press (mostly from some ponytailed hippie VP named Johnathan Schwartz) sounded like Sun still hasn't got that they need to take bold risks to stay relevent in today's computing world.
So by virtue of having stayed silent I think Bill Joy has more of a clue about company direction then these other clowns.
Sun (like the town of Gotham) needs an enema. If I was in McNealy's shoes I would hire somebody like Tim O'Reilly to come in and give the company a wake up call on corporate strategy.
Personally, I find this one much more fitting:
http://www.english.uga.edu/hc/unixrichiejoy.JPG
I priced a Sun PCI SCSI card last week. $500. No RAID, no cache, just a vanila SCSI card with a Sun sticker (and solaris support). Thats just insane.
One thing you do get is peace of mind in an environment where time == money. It is very likely that Sun-branded card was integration tested with their machines and Solaris, so the odds are very very good that it will serve you well. Contrast this with the PC world, where the odds are simply good. The difference is not trivial, IMO.
If I had a business, where revenue was good enough that I didn't have to survive on peanut butter and scrapped-together computers, I would seriously consider Sun equipment. It can be refreshing to simply plug in a card, do a boot -r, and have it ready to go. Along with SunSolve and docs.sun.com, Sun doesn't often leave people wanting for documentation, either. It seems they generally treat their customers pretty well. With PC companies, things are less predictable, and a big brand name doesn't really imply any amount of quality (often they are worse than the white-box suppliers).
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Article from SFGate:
Michael Dell, who built an empire selling computers based on other companies' innovations, argued Monday that the future in the technology market belongs to players who embrace industry standards, not proprietary systems.
The 38-year-old chief executive of Dell Inc. also strongly suggested that one of his company's top Silicon Valley rivals, Sun Microsystems, may never get back on its feet because it's stuck in a business model that no longer works.
"I think there are parts of the industry that will never recover, and the reason is that their business is fundamentally based on things that people aren't going to buy very much of anymore," Dell told The Chronicle after his keynote speech at OracleWorld, Oracle's annual user conference in San Francisco.
"They're waiting for (demand for proprietary systems) to come back," he added. "Sorry, it ain't going to happen."
Larry Singer, Sun's senior vice president for global market strategies, disputed Dell's view of the Santa Clara company and the trends in the technology industry.
"When Michael Dell gets up there and says those who don't follow industry standards won't make it, it's a bit disingenuous," he said in a phone interview.
"Innovation still matters. Market standards come from new innovations and new technologies."
Like other major companies such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM, the Texas firm sells computers, servers and other hardware based on widely used technologies developed by such companies as Intel and Microsoft.
On the other hand, Sun, which was once recognized as the top provider of corporate computing, has been a major industry player by offering products based mainly on its proprietary systems.
Asked if he believed that the struggling Sun would never recover, Dell, who typically shies away from comments on competitors, answered: "I sort of said that, but I didn't say that.
"But if you look at their peak revenues and where they are now, it's a pretty big difference, right?" he added. "And if you look at what people are buying now and what they were buying then, it's a big difference."
Singer defended Sun's strategy and performance.
"For Michael Dell, his definition of a market standard is the company that's selling the most today, and that's a pretty easy standard to pick," Singer said. Citing the rapid expansion of Sun's Java technology, particularly in mobile computing, he added, "The definition of what a standard is is beginning to change."
Dell's remarks underscored the debate over the role of innovation and research and development in the tech industry as top players, such as Dell, Sun and HP, maneuver for advantage in the anticipated rise in corporate spending on technology.
Dell Inc. became a tech behemoth by selling directly to consumers and keeping its spending on research and development down.
But rivals like HP and Sun have portrayed the Texas firm as a technological lightweight that grew on the backs of other companies' hard work in research and development.
Dell Inc. has made inroads in the low-end server market, defined as systems under $100,000 each.
But its critics scoff at the company's bid to move up the corporate technology market, arguing that only companies that invest in innovation can afford to compete in the mid-range and higher-end corporate markets.
Sun lost $2.38 billion in its fiscal year that ended in June, compared with a loss of $587 million the previous year. But the company has remained a respected technology innovator, particularly in the high-end market.
"The companies that will survive will be those that innovate technologies," and that means spending on research and development, Singer said.
But Dell has been unfazed by such criticism. In the interview, he reaffirmed his belief that hefty R&D budgets can be overrated and don't necessarily lead to hi
After several years, I finally got there, and was immensely distressed at the culture of "not invented here" and "zero career growth" as unspoken rules.
Same with nearly all companies. There are two philosophies of running companies.
Method #1: "Core Technology Group" - Form your core technology group with experienced staff. Then recruit project managers to manage software engineers. Any strangers will only get offered the dead-end jobs while nieces/nephews and trusted staff get the good software engineering jobs. This is great if you're an senior engineer/architect. The advantage of this method is you keep your senior staff. The disadvantage is that you keep losing your junior staff.
Method #2: "Everyone gets pushed up into management". In this method, the philosophy is to get the new graduates to bring in new ideas. Whenever somebody comes along and has experience (from another company or an university project) an existing member of staff is promoted to team leader. After several pushes they get pushed into a project manager (and promptly leave to set up their own company). In some states/countries management will slap on a Non-Compete-Agreement if they can get off with it. This usually ends up with the brightest entry-level graduates not applying to the company. The disadvantage is that even if you are loyal to the company you'll more often than not get bogged down in some tedious but critical part of a project, only to see new graduates get to work on the latest technology.
This is great when you're an entry level graduate. The disadvantage to the company is that they keep losing their senior staff. Smaller companies seem to be run this way.
Be lucky you haven't applied to a company which uses grad-fighting as an interview technique: Invite 10-12 graduates to an interview session and sit them around a table for a debate. Tell them that there are several positions available and that these will go to the individuals who make the most contribution to the debate. Then sit back and watch the fight take place.
You owe it to yourself and your self-esteem to start looking hard for an alternative to this job. Once your boss belittles your worth and contribution, your best answer is to find another job (not that I'm recommending you jump out of the pan and into the fire, though) because:
a) you will learn something new at a new job
b) you will feel better for having found work where you are appreciated
c) you will allow your former boss the opportunity to determine for himself just how important your contribution really was
By the very fact you read this web site, you are more informed than many and your desire to stay abreast of current developments in tech means you most likely have retained (or even added to) your senior admin skills during your time at Kodak.
Consider non-standard jobs, or start contributing to existing free/open source projects in your spare time now, and that may help you connect with people in a position to hire.
Good luck, and don't let bozos make you feel bad!