Sun Says Hardware Will Be Free

Posted by michael on Tuesday June 1, 2004 @05:29AM from the sun-hardware-overpriced-anyway dept.

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."

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Re:A return to the old phone company by Anonymous Coward · 2004-06-01 06:05 · Score: 5, Informative

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.