Sun Banks On Open Source For Its Survival

CWmike writes "In moving to cut its current workforce by between 15% and 18% today, Sun is trying to stay ahead of a falling knife. And today's announcement made it clear that Sun officials are banking on the company's open-source strategy to help it pull through. A cut of up to 6,000 employees at Sun will hurt, but CEO Jonathan Schwartz contends users will be more inclined to try open-source products such as MySQL, OpenSolaris and Sun's GlassFish application server during a time of economic stress." Reader Barence also pointed out that Sun will begin to auction "branding space" in OpenOffice.

Comments

No f**ing way.

[Jane Q. Public]

If they want to stay afloat, they want the support of businesses. And from the position of a business owner, there is no way -- I mean NO WAY -- that I will accept advertising on my business documents. If somebody tried this STUPID move I would not only stop using their free product, I would refuse to use their commercial version. The idea is ASININE.

Schwartz needs to stop believing in the Mel Brooks idea of "the Schwartz be with you". This is not a Mel Brooks movie.

Sun needs market share. And they will never get it if this is the way they want to roll.

Re:No f**ing way.

[Firehed]

On or alongside? Obviously nobody would go for any free service that inserts ads INTO their business documents, but I think most people aren't especially bothered by the idea of having automated advertisements sitting next to what they're doing. It's never once bothered me in Gmail, and I honestly don't even know if they're present in GDocs. Neither is Sun's product of course, but Google seems to be doing quite well by, at it's core, providing free products to people.

Something tells me that I'd find it significantly more distracting in OpenOffice, but that's probably more due to its interface being more than cluttered enough already. I'm sure part of it is that we're used to seeing ads in a browser window but nowhere else; I think the bigger issue is that giant stupid flashing banners that some people try using to monetize their freeware is hugely distracting to the point where it makes the product harder to use. OO is a respectable piece of competition for MSOffice for 99% of users, but after having been spoiled by the interface in Apple's $80 iWork08 suite, OO is never something I'd pay for given its paid competition. If they could revamp it with a clean interface and wanted to put a narrow strip of text ads at the top for unpaid users, I suppose that's an option.

It's a bad position to be in - right now, OpenOffice is just burning money, it's not easily monetized through advertising (probably ineffective, lower acceptance, too small of an audience), and it probably wouldn't stand a chance of competing as paid software. Even if it was $10 at Best Buy and still free for download (identical versions, you're paying for the CD and distribution basically), people are so tuned into "Microsoft(R) Office[TM]" as their office suite that it would just get ignored in stores.

MySQL at least seems to have a business model behind it, and one that's at least not losing money even if it's not immensely profitable (I have no idea what the numbers look like, but it can't be bringing in a ton or else they wouldn't be having these issues).

Re:No f**ing way.

[NoobixCube]

Certainly not a smart move with Novell doing their repackage with Go-oo, and IBM basing Lotus off an earlier version. I can just see the users flocking in droves to either of those two suites now. This is Novell's chance to basically steal OpenOffice.org right out of Sun's hands. I'm not sure if Novell would handle it well, but they can hardly do worse than Sun, from what I've heard about their management of OO.o.

Re:No f**ing way.

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

I don't _think_ they mean that; it wouldn't really work anyway as someone would fork the project. I _think_ they meant assisting companies that was to brand the office product, so if say Dell wanted to pre-load an office suite, they could install a Dell branded Star-Office or OOo.

I could be wrong of course! But what you are suggesting is sooooo off-the-scale-dumb that really can't see that being what they meant!

Re:No f**ing way.

[westlake]

Google seems to be doing quite well by, at it's core, providing free products to people.

.

Strip away the add revenues from Google search and how much is left? When consumer sales hit bottom what happens to Google?

Re:No f**ing way.

[pallmall1]

...but they can hardly do worse than Sun, from what I've heard about their management of OO.o.

Sun's management of both OpenOffice and Java is lousy. They don't listen to their users -- the Java bug-tracking and voting system is bogus, and OpenOffice is "primitive".

Read the threads linked to above to get an idea of Sun's utter cluelessness.

Re:No f**ing way.

[jmorris42]

> I _think_ they meant assisting companies that was to brand the office product, so if say
> Dell wanted to pre-load an office suite, they could install a Dell branded Star-Office or OOo.

They would certainly do that, but as I just noted in a post above, there will be no OEM preloading of OO.o because Microsoft would destroy anyone who attacked it in such a direct way. Simply forcing them to buy Windows at the retail OEM rates would be more than enough to do it and 100% legal. So that's off the table.

I'm just hoping Sun will be sane enough to understand where the line will be that simply kills OO.o at Sun and moves the project to Novell/Microsoft. There are a lot of ways to do co-branding that would only be annoying to users and not instantly lethal to Sun.

Annoying:

Inserting a virtual printer target that submits your document to an online printer/finisher for printout, binding and either ships the finished work or lets you pick it up at the neighborhood shop.

Add UI widgets to use an officially blessed net to fax gateway.

Add click to buy buttons for additional clipart, fonts, themes, templates, etc. from third parties. Perhaps with free previews, sample, etc.

Probably lethal:

Sticking an ad banner in the running product.

Instantly lethal:

Inserting ANY advertising into the output of printed documents or presentations.

Re:No f**ing way.

[Blackknight]

ZFS, dtrace, zones, Solaris Cluster, xen, java, and MySQL aren't "cool things?"

Sun is one of the biggest open source companies around even if their OS isn't the most popular. I know if it wasn't for SXCE and OpenSolaris I wouldn't be using Sun products at all, it's great to have the free versions to learn on and you can just add a support contract later if you want it.

daft

[superskippy]

Much as I like open source, giving stuff away is really not what a business that need some cash needs right now.

Strategy

[should_be_linear]

Java good, Netbeans good, MySQL good, OpenOffice OK, Glassfish good, OpenSolaris.... WTF? Why burning cash on redudant OS when few advantages over Linux could easily moved to Linux kernel? Do they understand amount of money needed to implent at least decent amount of hardware support?

Re:Strategy

[m50d]

Opensolaris is substantially more stable than Linux, along with having some unique features of its own. But more than anything it provides a platform that is all Sun's, complete with backwards compatibility going back over ten years even in the drivers (compare with linux where I struggle to compile modules from six months ago against new releases). You're right that hardware support is currently lacking, but there's still time for that to come - and architecturally Opensolaris has the potential to be a much better OS than Linux. It is not at all redundant.

Re:Strategy

[amorsen]

Or maybe Solaris on SPARC isn't as fantastic as you think. Back in the day when SPARC hardware actually mattered, the Linux SPARC port was rather successful. People actually chose to run Linux even though Solaris came free with the hardware and had perfect driver compatibility.

I don't see a future for Sun, no matter which part of their business they focus on, except possibly MySQL. Sun can't live off of MySQL unless they turn themselves into MySQL AB, and then what was the point?

Re:Strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

People actually chose to run Linux even though Solaris came free with the hardware and had perfect driver compatibility.

I attribute that to bias, laziness, and fear of the unknown. Was the system still under support when they did that? People who do that are less familiar with Solaris since they couldn't run it at home for free. They've been running Linux so long that they can't seem to bother to learn a new OS, or the idiosyncracies of a slighty different OS. They'd rather install something familiar. I doubt that it was necessarily the better OS for the system.

I see this with students in the university all the time. The majority of undergrads come to the system with Windows at home and won't bother learning anything but very basic unix to do their CS work. They learn just enough to get by and pass the classes. Very few even want to use the Macs, much less the unix systems, unless they have to. Lower division Undergrad classes are required to use Unix for their coursework, which is the only reason they use it. By the time they reach upper division, most are back on windows, using their own laptops or crowding the Windows labs. They've never sat down and run man on /bin and /sbin commands. They're always having basic problems with finding out how to get things done.

A similar thing happens with the grad students, except that they're using linux or Mac and don't like other flavors of Unix unless they're required to use it. Everyone wants what's familiar. They develope a bias towards the familiar and against the unfamiliar.

I've worked on several varieties of Unix and Linux as well as Windows and Macs so I've had no problems adapting. However the majority of users choose what is familiar to them due to laziness and/or fear. I've hacked my way through Novell's Netware. I've worked through VMS. I've programmed for Mac/Unix/Windows and the hardest part was always the initial transition of learning the new systems. I've supported Various Unix system, and the hardest part was learning the idiosyncracies of each. They're always annoying initially while you figure out how it's done differently.

There's always some fear of the unknown, but that should be overcome if you want to do your job well. You use the system that suits the job. You don't cram linux into everything just because you can't handle learning the OS. However, with that said, sometimes linux is the best OS for the job at hand. If that's the case don't buy solaris sparc hardware. That's just wasting money. It's stupid.

Long term prospects are not good for Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Suns long term (5-10 year) prospects just don't look good. Their core of products are all up against strong competition. The Sparc architecture is not significantly better than x86-64 to justify the additional cost and "non-standard" architecture to buyers, Solaris has some nice features but is up against both Linux & itself on x86-64 & IA32, where Linux continues to eat into the market share of traditional UNIX systems, and their x86-64 servers are commodity boxes which you can (& do) buy from someone else. Oh and of course Java and OpenOffice are established products that they have no way to capitalise on, essentially making them money-sinks on the balance sheet.

Sun has to find a way to create a sustainable revenue stream, and it doesn't have much to work with.

Re:Long term prospects are not good for Sun

[superskippy]

No, that's IBM.

I remember Sun adverts during the dot-com boom days that mocked IBM for having a huge range of stuff, where as Sun sold only one simple stack of stuff- theirs.

Re:Message to Jonathan Schwartz

[MtViewGuy]

The problem with Sun is that they're WAY behind the curve compared to even IBM in supporting Open Source (remember, IBM spent a huge amount of money porting Linux to run on their "big iron" platforms back in better economic times).

Because IBM has a great reputation as a computer services company nowadays, they can easily offer powerful enterprise-wide computing platforms at reasonable prices--and IBM has much more name recognition than Sun.

Re:Message to Jonathan Schwartz

[jamesswift]

their reputation in the open source world is marginal at best because they've always been half-hearted about it.

I'm not really agreeing or disagreeing with that but just to provide an alternative opinion

"I think Sun has, well, with this contribution, have contributed more than any other company to the free software community in the form of software. And it shows leadership. It's an example that I hope others will follow." - Richard Stallman

http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/sun_s_choice_of_the_gpl_and_rms_in_the_webcast

Newsflash

[fortapocalypse]

Sun's approval rating drops by 15% - 18% today.

"but CEO Jonathan Schwartz contends users will be more inclined to try open-source products such as MySQL, OpenSolaris and Sun's GlassFish application server during a time of economic stress."

So, during a time of economic stress people will just be crawling over themselves to pay for MySQL, OpenSolaris, and GlassFish when the reason they would use those during such a time would be that they are free?

Re:Jonothan Schwartz is safe, at least!

[pbhj]

WTF do you expect? "We're having a major downturn, here's your hefty salary increase"?

$11 million sounds like quite a large bonus - that's gotta be a smack in the face for all Sun employees if the company is saying they can't afford to give them an inflationary pay increase. I bet there are people working harder at Sun than the CEO, the myth that managers work harder/deserve more money than others needs to die. You can't blame an employee for being angry at that.

Incidentally share holders couldn't care less (on the whole) about "value". They care about short-term monetary profit, nothing else. If you're an uber coder that produces great products it doesn't matter - you can probably be forced to work faster and produce poorer code that will still sell.

Why they won't apply these principles to the executives I don't know.

More OpenOffice please

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I don't know what portion of the OpenOffice developers work for Sun, but I'll bet it's a lot. And that's got to change. This is a worthwhile project -- without it, the Linux desktop basically ceases to exist (sorry KOffice fans, it's a great project, but it isn't even close to OpenOffice in terms of being usable as a true MS Office replacement).

Red Hat? Novell? CANONICAL?? You've got to saturate this project with developers. Without it, desktop Linux is dead in the water. And yes, desktop Linux is real, today, despite what detractors say. Take that away and Linux slowly sinks in other areas too.

And I agree with whoever suggested that they need to get the product out in front of more Joe Sixpak types. Press a bunch of CD's and hand them out like candy. It worked for AOL back in the day. We've got to get to a point where everyone's got "one of those OpenOffice CD's" lying around, so when they need to get a document together in the middle of the night and they don't have the time, inclination, or source media to get an MS Office install together, the little light bulb comes on over their head, they toss in the OpenOffice CD, and we have one more user.

And of course the preload market needs to be saturated with OpenOffice. Every new PC needs to have a copy of OpenOffice preloaded. As the price of computers continues to come down, this could be the key to keeping that price point down. I'm sure Microsoft is really going to turn the screws on this one, but if a few PC manufacturers are bold enough to do it, this could be the pivotal moment for that.

For 90% of the users out there, OpenOffice is MS Office's equal. It's time to really push push push to get it out in front of them.

Open Source != Free

[itomato]

Giving stuff away happens when things are "Free" as in beer.

Making things available happens when things are "Free" as in Freedom.

Java has been free like beer for ages. Coincidentally, SUNW/JAVA stock values were higher than they are today.

Free stuff attracts people. Microsoft wins developer mindshare with free or ridiculously low-cost software development tools. College students learn what they can afford to learn.

Free stuff up front with paid support to be delivered in the future is the way things seem to be going.

"Here's this thing.. Have fun with it! If you need help, it will cost you. Good luck!"

Re:They dropped $1 billion on MySQL

[martenmickos]

Thx for the comments on MySQL as part of Sun. The MySQL business is growing faster now than before (measured in revenues) and we are the fastest growing major DBMS business in the world. So, although someone could claim I am biased, I think it is fair to say that the acquisition made sense from a pure revenue growth perspective.

Additionally, Sun is selling hardware to MySQL users and customers - servers that provide a performance boost over what people use today.

Thirdly there are synergies between MySQL and Sun's various software products - especially Glassfish, NetBeans, ZFS, Identity Manager, etc. A web shop may not need all of those, but large corporations see a benefit in getting many products from the same vendor.

Still there is no denying that Sun has major challenges today. We are hard at work fixing the problems. And that's why I keep following the discussions on /. - there is always some great suggestion from someone that we can make good use of.

Marten Mickos
(formerly CEO at MySQL AB, now head of Sun's Database Group)