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McNealy Created Millions of Jobs?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the not-the-steve-variety dept.

cahiha writes "In his blog, Jonathan Schwartz argues that Scott McNealy is single-handedly responsible for making network computing a reality. His timeline is something like that in 1992, the industry was focused on 'Chicago' (Windows 95), while McNealy bravely went his own way-- 'the network is the computer.' He goes on to claim that 'There is no single individual who has created more jobs around the world than [Scott McNealy]. [...] I'm not talking hundreds or thousands of jobs, I'm talking millions.' I have trouble following his argument: client/server computing and distributed computing were already widely available and widely used in the early 1990s. The defining applications of the emerging Internet were, not Java, but Apache, Netscape, and Perl. Sun's biggest response to Chicago was to attempt to establish Java as the predominant desktop application delivery platform, something they have not succeeded at so far. So, what do you think: is Schwartz right in giving credit to McNealy for creating 'millions' of jobs? Or has Sun been a company on the decline since the mid-1990s, only temporarily buoyed by the Internet bubble?"

3 of 363 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Credit for millions of jobs?? by Bombula · · Score: 5, Insightful
    What about Edison? He rolled out electrical power at least, even if he didn't invent it. Does that mean he 'created' every job in the modern world? Or what about the fellow in Mesopotamia 8,000 years ago who invented the wheel? How many jobs did he create?

    Seems largely retarded to take credit for jobs created indirectly, since there's no logical place to draw boundaries in either space or time.

    --
    A-Bomb
  2. Re:Not really SELF-aggrandizing... by VENONA · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Applications are all still hosted on the local machine with the exception of webmail clients."

    What an amazing statement. I take it you don't do any remote banking, your workplace doesn't use one of the Web based CRM or system management apps, etc.

    --
    What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
  3. Re:Keeping Java Closed by $1uck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It would be nice if it were open source,

    Why? This seems to be a popular opinion on Slashdot, and I'm curious why people need it to be any more open than it is? I mean afaik, the only thing that isn't "open" about it is the spec. If you want to create your own implementation of a JVM you're allowed but it must conform to the spec. This is a very *good* thing IMO. It would really suck if MS had been able to complete its "embrace and extend" manuever on Java (which is what MS has done with the open web standards and browsers) and it would suck even more if there were 5 different JVM's out there and you had to tailor your code to run on each one. You would completely lose the WORA (or you'd have to do all sorts of gimmicky crap to figure out what jvm you were running on -thats a lot of fun with browsers and html, I think it would be even more annoying with code). So I ask again, not rhetorically, but honestly: why open source it? Am I missing something?