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Sun's President Dreams of a Linux Future
Sara Chan writes "The Economist has a story analyzing the recent Sun-Microsoft deal. What's especially interesting is the ending. Sun recently promoted Jonathan Schwartz to President and Chief Operating Officer, recognizing the need for radical change if the company is to survive. According to the story, Schwartz's dream is 'to sell deep-discount desktop computers at Wal-Mart, carrying Sun's office applications on top of a Linux operating system'!"
When Mr Ballmer gives Mr McNealy a hug and says that "we do both believe in intellectual property", this is a not-so-veiled jab at the open-source Linux, which both men consider, in essence, communistic. Microsoft and Sun happen to be the only major backers (in the form of licence payments) of Linux's gadfly, a firm called SCO, which is trying to obtain money from Linux users with threats of litigation.
The article also points out that LINUX hurts Sun more than Microsoft:
Linux, however, is hurting Sun far more than Microsoft. Solaris is similar to Linux, which makes it very easy for customers to switch from one to the other. Migrating from Windows to Linux is a much more fiddly process.
I think Microsoft is particularly wiley here. They make nice with Sun knowing that Sun will probably become marginalized as a result of the growth of LINUX and not end up being much of a competitor at all. I am not faulting Microsoft for this, but, you gotta believe that they believe, in their heart-of-hearts (do they have those?) that they will eventually own the whole pie. This sure is fun to watch.....
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
with no direction. One moment they are advocating how big linux and OSS movement is, the next moment a backhand deal with MSFT. I wouldn't trust SUN too much.
Activists United
Sun makes some very nice, albeit expensive, high-end servers. If you're looking for very high-end stuff, sun hardware is way up there. Solaris is an excellent operating system as well. Sun should stick to what they do best (high-end stuff) and not try to venture into low-end hardware.
This is part of a trend that we've been seeing from sun: they don't know what they want. They thought Java was going to make them lots of money, and that they were going to be a software company; now they have very few people actually working on it. They don't seem to be sure what they think of linux, because they are both promoting it and trying to hurt it at the same time. And now this high-end AND low-end stuff, it doens't really add up. Sun must should just stick to what they do best, and maybe make some lower-end servers (2,3k machines), but not go anywhere close to cheap cheap cheap.
It wants its computer business strategy back.
Deep-discount computers S U C K. They *must* know this. A free office suite on top of a free OS isn't going to do anything to sell these things if people can't double click and install software, preferably the software they sell at WAL-MART.
"I bought this here Sun computer, but it won't run these deer huntin' and bass fishin' games I bought with it. I'd like my munny back, please"
Let's set up Linux so it can:
1. Find its fonts without having to edit the XF86Config file 189 times and install some half-working font server for the other three fonts.
2. Upgrade Gnome and KDE applications without having to install yet ANOTHER version of glibc. That or statically link everything and quit pursuing dynamically-linked utopia. I think there's enough disk space now.
3. Have a file manager that isn't linked to every single library on the system, so that if one library is upgraded/replaced, it doesn't make the file manager useless.
4. Make it so these problems can be fixed without changing distributions.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Anybody announcing a "partnership" with Microsoft gets screwed, hard, in the end. This is really an admission by Sun that they're losing.
Badly.
Watch Sun continue to wither on the vine. Watch it slowly shrink, more each year. They might have a "we'll sell Linux to lusers at Walmart!" strategy, but that's simply absurd.
Selling $199 computers at Walmart is not the road ahead for Sun Microsystems!
IBM has grabbed the Linux ball and run like hell with it, and they've done very well. Sun has pussy footed, flip-flopping more often than a spatula at a pancake shop on Linux.
They have no clear strategy. They have no real, effective, business case for using Linux in their organization. And, unless they come with something, and damn quick, the train will have passed them by.
As a post note, Sun made theirs by grabbing a commodity operating system, putting good hardware underneath it, and selling it for a fair price. Why can't they do that anymore?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
More likely the hug by Ballmer was like the kiss of death. He probably whispered something into McNealy's ear like, "Sell Windows workstations and we'll let you live."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Microsoft can only buy that which can be bought.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual: of the mind
Property: that over which one has control
For a 38 year old CEO, you'd think he was quite smart. OTOH I think he's been quite daft.
Making friends with your enemy's enemy, leading to profit doesn't usually work. Not in Illinois, not in Iraq.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sure, market Linux as a cheaper, "generic" alternative to the mainstream OS.
That'll do wonders for the server Linux market, not to mention the general public awareness of Linux.
Oh, and call it "Lindows", so it fits in with the whole industry of substandard equipment with brand names like "Toshipa", "Somy", etc.
Walmart are already selling linux PCs and PCs with Windows XP and OpenOffice.org.
Sun's in the game with their Java Desktop.
It'll be interesting to see what the OEMs do about OpenOffice, though, Dell offering OpenOffice would be a real foot in the door.
Workstations have not been Sun's core business for about ten years now. Intel based machines were already cutting into that market by the mid 90's (look at what happened to SGI at that time.) They switched to servers, particularly high end ones, and made loads more money. Faster and even cheaper Intel processors, Linux, and clustering plus the IT recession are killing this market, too.
The workstation market is a niche market with high margins, well suited to Apple. It is not a very significant market, though. Sun gave up on it a long time ago.
THe OS may be free but MS is taking over the server market. They own half of it!
.NET.
.NET client/server apps to probably your active directory configuration, and perhaps be indexing all your incoming email on exchange server. Now if a new database was needed for an IT project which os would come to mind first 5 years from now? Oracle, mysql, or SQL-Server that is fully integrated with everything and supported by VB.NET?
As Windows takes over, Unix is fighting on another front called Linux.
Ever here of divide and conquor? Politicans and the Romans used this strategy quite well.
MS is estatic that Sun is going to go away since Sun is fighting 2 fronts it will not be able to have as much ammo agaisnt Microsoft. They are losing money while ms rakes in more and more.
The problem is since MS owns the desktops they can tie features into Windows2k3 via active directory, SQL server and
After awhile your workplace will have hundreds of MS_SQL-Server databases. They will be running on every copy of Windows(longhorn will use a lite version of it for the new filesystem), and from
MS SQL-Server will be the only one the CIO's would want due to desktop and Windows2k3 server tie-in.
PHB's love Microsoft for that reason. Its not just products but a whole architecture and platform across the enterprise. Java1 or whatever Sun planed with Iplanet and J2EE is too little and too late. They lost.
No wonder Eu is afraid of MS. They are the only ones seeing what they are doing.
The battle agaisnt Linux has only just begun.
http://saveie6.com/
5. Create at least one distribution in which in every single program, "copy" and "paste" are done in exactly the same way with exactly the same results 100% of the time.
6. Create at least one distribution in which every single scroll bar in the entire system looks the same.
7. No one ever has to think about the XF86Config file, ever.
8. There's a clear and obvious way to set and change your monitor resolution that works regardless of whether you know strange things about your monitor, or "scanlines", or the XF86Config file, and NO MATTER WHICH WM AND DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT YOU USE.
9. The way to set up a remote X session is clear and straightforward, and doesn't involve lots of poking at cryptic pages on google and headscratching trying to remember where you have to run Xauth or other such and whether you have forwarding enabled in your ssh_config , etc...
9a. No one ever gets the error message "Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1", for any reason, ever. That's just not descriptive as an error, and it doesn't give you any indication what to do to fix it.
10. If I am on a linux machine, and there's another linux or unix machine somewhere or hopefully even something more exotic (like windows), I can connect to that machine and open up a file browser window displaying the files there and edit them and copy them back and forth, without having to read the Midnight Commander web page, without having to set up cryptic emacs/vi plugins, without having to think about "does this remote computer have ftp, samba, afp, nfs, or some combination thereof?".
11. Make a GUI manpage browser with scrollbars, and hyperlinks, and tables of contents for individual manpages, and the ability to quickly expand/collapse individual sections within the individual manpages, and quickly sorted/filtered browsing of the man -k / apropos database; and put this program where people know it exists and know what it is.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Microsoft, on the other hand, really doesn't have the option to drop Windows until they rewrite the entire thing to run on top of the CLR, and rewrite the M$CLR to run on the HAL or another microkernel directly. (Maybe one with more functionality? But that might actually make it less portable.) Even then they probably won't do it, because it would remove their advantage over everyone else, which is to say hardware support. Unless of course they kick everything but video drivers and basic generic functionality common to all devices out into user space and have 'em all target the CLR. THAT will never happen because then anyone could easily use their drivers, very reliably, with minimal hacking.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You know what really gets say in what gets bought at work? Cost. As in Cost of the new system, cost of migrating from the current to the new system, etc... ANybody who would by sun just because sun boxen are 1337 shouldn't be buying anything more important that business cards.
It's been interesting watching my business migrate the enterprise HW from DEC to Compaq to HP because we get to keep our OS and processor arch. I don't care how 1337 sun is, it would be hugely expensive in terms of lost productivity for us to switch.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
Think about this, if Linux does totally marginalize Sun (like SCO is now) that means Linux has moved onto the big iron.
Even if Linux is successfull on big irons, this doesn't make Sun redundant. The interesting part for big irons is not the operating system, but also the hardware, the service and the know-how how to run those boxes. And Sun has excactly this kind of know-how.
Microsofts biggest fear is the Linux on small servers and the desktops. Microsoft was very successfull with Windows NT on small servers, because in combination with cheap x86 hardware it was cheaper than the more expensive Unix/Risc boxes.
But Linux can be cheaper than windows, this is the biggest problem for Microsoft. They can try to argue that it's easier or cheaper to develop for Windows or to administrate it, but I doubt that this works.
A second strategy for Microsoft would be to rely on patents and "interlectual property". And a partner in the Unix/Linux camp like Sun, whose software does integrate nicely with theirs, could help them very much.
Breakfast served all day!
Sun can embrace Linux, since they make more money selling support and they include Solaris "free" with their systems anyway. The money's in support.
Sorry man, but *nobody* has made money in Linux support. I can't think of a single company that has made $$ in Linux support. There's not a single Linux company on a solid financial footing. Sun makes it's money from selling complete HW/SW/support packages, not support alone.
Sun still has a lot of smart people working for them. However in the past few years a ton of their braintrust has left. Its eerily reminiscent of what happend at DEC towards the end .... bring in management and all the hackers will leave.
People like schwartz think that slick marketing and "features" are what will lead sun to microsoft like market dominance, that flies in the face of the past 20 years worth of sun's thought process.
SGI has no market share to speak of these days, HP and IBM (AIX) are the only other two "major" unix players and IBM has gained ground on Sun the past six quarters (?) and I believe they passed sun in unix marketshare quite some time ago (discarding "non unix" big iron).
IBM and HP are both backing linux (IBM is hopeful, HP is just hedging their bets) sun has been flimsy with their support of linux going back and forth and talking out of both sides of their mouth.
I think the reason Sun is spoken of so much is because they are an "old school" graybeard favorite. So certain groups of people have them placed on a pedestal, problem is they havent done anything in the past 5 years to justify it.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
You got one thing about that post right: "The battle against Linux has only just begun."
...
.NET is still struggling to gain market share on java, thats part of the reason microsoft did this deal, so they can hedge their bets. If .NET fails then they can fall back onto java and vice-versa.
.NET. MS doesn't hold ANY weight in the enterprise and sun's forays into the low end have been minor disasters
Everything else is crap, microsoft probably runs less than half of the sites on the net (apache runs 70% or the web servers, and I would venture most of those run BSD/UNIX/Linux). Microsoft can bundle the fuck out of whatever they want, it will HURT them in the long run because customers are already becoming weary of their crap with licensing and forced upgrades etc
Only one fortune 100 company uses windows 2k3. (source: netcraft). And MS-SQL is a piece of shit, everyone knows that. If they use it in their filesystem they will kill performance and negate any stability increases they have had in the past 5 years.
The EU went after MS for the same reason the American justice department did, they broke laws. The only difference is the bush administration let them off since they are big business friendly.
Then of course their is this POS DRM built in OS they want to release (whats the ETA now 2007 ?). That won't go over well. Linux has been gaining market share in the desktop arena over the past few years without major vendor support, not that companies like HP, Dell and Sun are backing it, gaining more share is a foregone conclusion, especially at its current price point.
The only market overlap that existed between sun and MS was the development arena. java vs
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
I think Mandrake coming out of bankruptcy is one of many examples that dispel that myth.
ymmv
Unless you mean free as in: if it's not our Definition of free, we don't include it, then Debian is the only one (though Gentoo could be made to (all ebuilds have what the licence is, and portage should be able to filter out all those you don't want.))
Everyone's base system is pretty much the same though, in terms of it being GPL.
"ditching Sun's computer systems, the equivalent of Ferraris, for cheaper boxes from Dell, Hewlett-Packard or IBM that run Linux, the equivalent of Fiats."
As someone who works in an ISP that is almost entirely Sun I believe the correct analogy would be a Rolls-Royce. Sun boxes, in my experience, are not really that fast for the money, but the quality of them is undeniable. Once you go through the pain of setting them up (Solaris=least fun Unix IMO), they sit there running for a decade. Very nice, but not exactly Ferraris.
Linux on i386, depending on the admin's skill, I would put more along the lines of a nice VW Jetta or Toyota. Stable, quick, cheap, more than enough for most people.
Dream on. I've personally plugged in so many linux boxes in small business, installing them over Small Business Servers charging $2000 per Linux install, and they have all not only been running without incident for years at a time, but all have thanked me and entrusted us for all their desktops. I am talking about law firms with revinues exceeding $11 million, manufacturing companies, and real estate offices. Web file/print, email and backup within domain logins is all it takes. And Gentoo + Samba/CUPS + postfix/courier/spamd + Apache/MySQL/PHP has done it every time. And no reboots or worms either. Software upgrades for free. What a change. I can't tell you how easy a sell it has been. Taking over the server market --- please! The only takeovers I see are the endless variety of worms every month that take over Windows servers.
By that definition, "Sun's Linux" qualifies too.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
FreeBSD?
I said nothing about them using only linux. or even primarily linux. but a customer running BSD or Unix or a mainframe is much much more likely to switch to linux than to windows. unix/bsd/linux are all of the same ilk, being based on open standards and not proprietary vendor based ones.
Linux is growing. Not much else is.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
Sun hasn't said "We're dropping Solaris" but embracing Linux without becoming a player in the Linux kernel team is a HUGE mistake.
Solaris does some things much better than Linux -- less and less, certainly, but, for example, Solaris does partitioning of machines, the IP stack is great, and Solaris boxes can be configured to run complicated apps with higher uptimes even than Linux -- it's close but Solaris still has a small edge in reliability.
So Sun embraces Linux, further marginalizes Solaris, and soon Solaris will only run on Sun's Big Iron -- E10K's and the like.
IBM will make Linux scream on their Big Iron, and some of us (more and more of us) will pick IBM's Iron over Sun's because it's the same across the board.
Sun really has two options. 1. Embrace Linux and be part of the process, cannibalizing Solaris for Linux's sake and becoming a major Linux player -- with the E10K running just a feature-rich on Linux as Solaris. 2. Push Solaris hard. Give it away for the small boxes, get it on the desktop, run Linux apps on it (they've already got a project to allow this), and keep a culture that's 100% Sun, stressing in their sales pitch the few, but legitimate ways where Linux is a liability on Big Iron.
Option 3, undermine Solaris, and remain apart from the Linux community, seems to be the chosen path, however. It's the same path SGI went down. You remember SGI, don't you? You know, the guys with the pretty colored plastic? Think back...
In general your points lack merit and an understanding of where the enterprise server market is today, but one point I will pick at specifically:
.NET is currently unable to really compete with it, from what I've seen. J2EE is massively popular and dominates its respective market the way Apache dominates web servers. In my opinion, J2EE needs to be fully embraced by the Open Source community for the purpose of developing free alternatives to high-end business software that hundreds of thousands of companies need (or would like to be able to afford!) Enterprise software is the final key to locking in the future of Open Source permanently. It's one thing to get a free OS and relational database. It's another when your whole business (or non-profit) can run on free, collaboratively developed, and easily customizable solutions. (Think of an "Apache" style project for all major business applications: accounting, ERP/CRM, communications, document management, etc.) For business purposes, the desktop is increasingly meaningless today -- it has largely become commoditized. (OS + office suite + web browser) Powerful, modular n-tier enterprise applications are the future.
"..and J2EE is too little and too late"
This could not be further from the truth. J2EE is a truly excellent solution for developing enterprise applications and
Agreed, and not only that but I think that people always underestimate the amount of money in midsize businesses.
MS is not going to win away all of Oracle's business and all of IBM's business because MS software just can't do quite as much for a very large enterprise.
However, a lot of midsize businesses will be faced with the UNIX vs windows question, because midsize businesses have requirements that are available in both UNIX and windows.
If sun is no longer around, people will still be applying the myth that linux is unsupported, and just choose windows.
So, microsoft DOES have a lot to gain.
In fact, does linux really have as much as microsoft to gain by Sun's demise? If Sun loses a customer, let's say for the sake of argument that customer is considering two choices:
(1) Move to linux
(2) Move to another big vendor (e.g. Microsoft)
Why would they choose #1 now if they haven't already? Probably they stuck with Sun because of support. That means they're looking for another vendor with a big name, e.g. microsoft.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
It would have been more appropriate if he kissed him full on the mouth like Michael Corleone did to Fredo... "You broke my heart Fredo!"...
:)
Next thing you know, Bill Gates is going to ask McNealy if he wants to go for a boat ride...
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Just like their commercial competitors...
this is sad - we are watching a death of a company right before our eyes and microsoft is lending a helping hand.
why doesn't sun do something creative. walmart pc's are not the answer.
they need to let java go and get the corporate desktop - java is something beautiful that they actually created but they are strangling it to death.
I hope when they go under they let the open source community have it. but if they sign deals like this other companies are going to get it when they go bankrupt.
here is the problem that open sourcing java would solve Scott - so let it go so it can live on and not be killed or held hostage by the companies you sign deals with.