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McNealy Steps Down as Sun Microsystems CEO
SlashdotOgre writes "Mercury News reports that Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, will be stepping down from his role as CEO. McNealy will continue as chairman, and fellow co-founder Jonathan Schwartz will now take the helm."
I am surprised the editors did not link to this rumor that McNealy is stepping down from a few days ago on Slashdot.
Funny McNealy dismissed this as a 22 year old rumor only a few days ago.
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At any rate, this should prompt the 30-something crowd here and elsewhere to reflect on just what the hell they've been doing with thir careers while this guy becomes the CEO of Sun...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Funny McNealy dismissed this as a 22 year old rumor only a few days ago.
Well it was a 22 year old rumor a few days ago...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
McNealy was resistant to a massive layoffs (25-35%), which analysts say are the only way to revamp Sun at this point.
More importantly, revamp as what? Big iron only?
I dunno
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Schwartz actually did found a company: Lighthouse Design, a NextStep application developer that Sun bought out in 1996, and turned into the core of their Java Applications Group, which was supposed to develop applications for those Java-based network computers that were going to put Microsoft out of business.
What's always bugged me is that McNealy spent a ton of money to acquire LD and the other companies that got folded into JAG — all of which was wasted, because it soon became obvious that nobody was going to buy network computers, and there was no reason to keep JAG going. JAG wasn't the first, and it wasn't the last ill-conceived attempt by Sun to win the desktop war with Microsoft, and McNealy has never been called to account for all the money he wasted on that war — a war that already a conspicuous victory for Microsoft long before Sun even got involved.
Instead, McNealy is being forced out for failing to sell high-end computers at a time when nobody's buying them. Wall Street is stupid.
IBM and a passel of other organizations who have based their application strategies on Java would put together an open source consortium that would support and guide Java. Something along the lines of the Eclipse or Apache foundations.
Hell, if M$ bought Java from SUN, we'd probably end up with better APIs.
I doubt it. Microsoft has had a couple of bold attempts to kill java, why would it better it?
It shipped JVM 1.1 with extensions, so that it really wasn't a compliant JVM. That left sun with the choice of either 1) accepting the changes, and having it controlled by MS, or 2) fighting them, leaving the Windows platform with an older JVM, and Bill G a "look we tried but Sun is so unreasonable" mood. They chose #2. Sucks for the people who are still saddled with a 1.1 JVM, most people wouldn't know to upgrade, and think that any suckitude is due to Java, not MS's hacking of it. I for one am saddled with not one but two apps that require JVM 1.1 and are they ever slow.
Even that wasn't enough, MS created C# as a Java killer. Think of it as Java as if the initial version was 1.4, already had learned the failures of the previous editions. They were able to learn from Sun's early mistakes. And you can also bust out of the VM when you want to, to tie you to Windows more tightly.
MS wants to destroy anything that it feels can destroy Windows. ANything that can be a platform that doesn't force you to use Windows is a threat. If it were possible to "buy" Java (and i'm not sure of the status of the JCP) they'd tightly tie it to windows, and make things not quite work right elsewhere.
And the M$ thing is old. Microsoft is a for-profit corporation. It is not the only for-profit company. Unless you feel the need to add $ to every company (do i hear $un anyone, Ci$co? $u$e?) it seems kind of pointless. Yes they have been convicted in a court of law for dirty tricks, but they are not the only one. There may be more use in targetting companies that actively kill people or foster repressive regimes ($hell Oil?)
Java from SUN, who have failed Java like only SUN could.
I don't know what planet you are on, but on mine Java is one of the most successful and widely used development languages of all time. If that is 'failing', I would be interested in your definition of 'succeeding'.
Despite all that, the company has really screwed up. I don't think they did a good job advocating Java or buying the mindshare of the development community.
Eh? Have you any idea of the size of the Java development community?
Java started out as a loss leader for solaris, which is why I can compile python up on NetBSD, but not java.
Now that their OS business is a lost cause sun should release the java sources under a license which lets people port it to different platforms. The user base will increase and they may be able to compete with C#
http://michaelsmith.id.au
he was an amazing businessman (he told stories about his job before Sun... at a dog food company) but simply had no connection to the tech.
Some of the lousiest managers and executives are techies. This is not to say that every techie is lousy manager/executive, but rather that it does not go automatically that a good engineer would be a good manager.
Some of the best executives for tech companies were non techies. Look at who turned around IBM from another dinosaur to be to what it is today: a tech capable respected company that is kinder and gentler: Lou Gerstner came from non other than Nabisco...
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No! That would kill Java.
Not necessarily. What matters is that distributions pass the compatibility tests. There is nothing to stop open source versions passing these tests.
Co-founder or not, my advice to Schwartz is the following. Don't try to beat either Linux or Microsoft at their games. You will lose. I suggest instead that you do something that will take the rest of the industry completely by surprise. Invest your remaining resources into the next big thing, the one thing that will solve the biggest problem in the computer industry: unreliability. Put all your money in non-algorithmic, signal-based, synchronous software. It will revolutionize both the hardware and the software industry and usher in the biggest change in computing since the days of Charles Babbage and Lady Lovelace. Don't say you weren't warned. ahahaha...
Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix It:
Am I the only one disappointed in Jonathan Schwartz? I met him a few times and while he seemed very knowledgeable and charismatic, he lacked quite a bit in mental flexibility. I doubt it was my comments on the panels I was on, but he pretty much laughed in my face when I made certain comments - and now, two years later the software at sun is treated pretty much in exactly the way I talked about. Now, its Sun's money and whatever - but that (and a few similar incidents with him) left a bad taste in my mouth. He does a good job at hiding it, but he's incredibly arrogant and suffers under the not-invented-here issue that already brought down many companies of substantial size - think Digital.
Sorry to say that - but Sun needs someone who is more open and listens better than Schwartz. He's a good leader, but he certainly lacks in vision and new, revolutionary ideas.
Peter.
How did we go from McNealy leaving Sun to Sun going out of business and Java being "abandoned". Do I sense wishful thinking on your part? And you get moded "insightful"?
How did you infer that Sun was going out of business? They're not consistently profitable, but they're not bleeding red ink either. The company also has healthy cash reserves.
As for Java, the spec is wide open for anybody to implement, which the Apache Harmony project is in the process of doing. Sun may head the JCP, but other companies like IBM, Oracle, and BAE would pick up the slack, as they have too much invested in Java to abandon it.
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Ah, yes. You've shared your expertise on the whole Sun issue before. Didn't go well then, either.
Do you know why people are writing AJAX applications? It's because Sun failed the promise of java. Do you know why there are so few java gui apps? Because Sun failed java. Do you know why Ruby on Rails exist? Because Sun failed Java.
Java was all full of promise. Cross platform, run from the browser, free yourself from the drudgery of writing stateless apps using http and and that abortion known as javascript, no more learning 15 different gui toolkits, etc.
Sun failed misreably in fulfilling the promise of java. They took forever to get swing to perform at 70% of native applications, they still don't have VM sharing, java web start is still the ugliest and worst behaving application ever put out by a fortune 500 company.
So yes there are a billion java programmers all writing web apps but it's become a ghetto. Java was destined for bigger things.
evil is as evil does
Absolutly. It should also be understood that what made PCs (of any kind) a break away success was the ability to avoid the IT guys always telling you what you need, and never giving you what you want. Until and unless a thin client give application flexibility to the organization as a whole instead of just handing power back to the IT shops, it ain't gonna happen.
Actually Java is one of Suns biggest successes, if it wasnt for java they probably would have gone the way of SGI. Face it Java is one of the most successful languages currently in existence and has replaced Cobol and C++ in the Enterprise application area. If you are just a guy who runs a few BSD boxen at home or small companies you never get the picture on how much impact java has had in the enterprise area.
If Apple is also a failure and being beat upon by Gates like a rented mule...then give me some of that failure! It must be wonderful to be beat like a mule and to be an utter failure, after all, your stock price quadruples over the period of a couple of years. I think more of us can do with failure like that!
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