Sun Says Hardware Will Be Free

ron_ivi writes "Reuters reports that Sun's President and COO thinks hardware will be free and that people will pay for software subscriptions instead. Reuters quotes Schwartz: 'In our world, you will subscribe to the software and the hardware is free.' 'Directionally, our expectation is that in fiscal 2005 you're going to see a rapid departure from selling hardware, software and services apart.' 'Bill Gates and I agree that within four to five years hardware will be free.' We've recently read here on /. how Gates thinks hardware will be free."

Comments

Re:Free Market

[Anne Thwacks]

I don't know which country that is, but here in the UK, leasing is popular, because the tax structure is massively rigged in its favour. If you have a car on a company lease, you effectively avoid taxes of 30%, and possibly considerably more.

Re:A return to the old phone company

[Grishnakh]

I was very young at that time, but I think consumers got fed up with the situation where they could only have one phone in the entire house, or had to pay hefty monthly fees for additional phones. I believe this spurred the government to change the law so that property owners owned the lines inside their houses (previously, Ma Bell owned the actual wiring, even though it was inside your walls!), and could purchase their own phones if they wanted.

Re:A return to the old phone company

[Anonymous Coward]

The government mandated it with the breakup of the "Ma Bell" single phone company. Part of their monopoly was with service, so they split into the "Baby Bells" regionally, then had to allow competition later within those markets. The other part of the monopoly was in physical equipment. You weren't allowed to connect a non-Bell phone to your line. They had a proprietary connector, which they had to replace with the RJ45 jacks everyone has now. That standard jack allowed citizens (aka consumers - I hate that term!) to connect phones made by anyone.