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Sun Banks On Open Source For Its Survival

Posted by Soulskill on from the cutting-costs dept.

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.

4 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. They dropped $1 billion on MySQL by Phantom+Gremlin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not a software guy, so maybe I'm missing something. But paying $1 billion for MySQL (less than 1 year ago!) didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Wasn't a lot of the code GPL?

    As of yesterday the stock market values the equity at $3 billion. And actually values the company at only $1.6 billion (they have $2.6 billion in cash but also have $1.3 billion in debt).

    Maybe a company that throws money around so freely deserves to go out of business. Even in 2008, a billion US dollars is still a *lot* of money.

    1. Re:They dropped $1 billion on MySQL by antifoidulus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually the thing they sold(and still do sell) is a more "up to date" MySQL(including security fixes). The community version of mysql is always a little bit behind the Enterprise version in terms of bug fixes etc. They also sell support and probably engineering as well(don't know, haven't used that). We bought the MySQL enterprise edition where I work because we are being forced to be paranoid about security, and that includes always having the latest and greatest db software(whether or not MySQL is more or less secure than Postgres is another matter altogether)

      --
      Monstar L
  2. Re:Jonothan Schwartz is safe, at least! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I work for Sun, and I suspect that you do, too. I'm an "individual contributor" and I have nothing to do with management. Nor do I own any Sun stock.

    Since I can't give you the Flamebait mod you deserve - since you should and do know better - I'll point out a couple of things for the benefit of those playing along at home.

    The cuts are not likely to come from "vital groups that provide support and engineering for major customer contracts". That would be suicidal; Schwartz, Green, and others at the upper levels have said as much. They are more likely to come from areas that are consistently failing to meet targets or provide cashflow. Software, support, and allied services currently stand the best chance of generating near-term revenue.

    And I'm sorry you're so upset that you won't be getting a pay rise this year. Guess what? I won't, either! But you don't see me bitching about it. WTF do you expect? "We're having a major downturn, here's your hefty salary increase"?

    If you want to keep your job, you'd better quit whingeing about how you're not getting rich as quickly as you might like and that you're not going to be able to expense quite so many lattÃs as you've been, quit worrying about what Jonathan Schwartz' ponytail is having for breakfast, and start doing something to generate value for the company and customers, because if you can't show that you are, you're going to walk.

    Here's a tip: If you're not doing something relating to software or support, get your arse over there and start doing something with a demonstrable benefit to the firm's bottom line ASAP.

  3. Re:You've never used a Sunfire x4100 x86_64 server by Kent+Recal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why is it that stupid people always put the blame on the vendor. There must be a pattern in there...
    We have over 50 xfires (4100s, 4200s, 4600s) in production, so I feel an obligation to comment on this drivel.

    1. If you really have mouthbreathers on your team that manage to break a server with the pen switch (of all things!) then you have much bigger problems to worry about. I see no difference between the pen-switch design that Sun uses and the stuff that you find on Supermicro or Dell Chassis everywhere. So better keep your "people" far away from those, too...
    2. I don't buy your "front panels falling off" story either. I have no idea what the hell you guys are doing to your servers (curling them through the datacenter?) but anyone who has worked with xfire hardware can attest that design and build are generally stellar, no less. Just by looking at the picture I can only wonder what part of the panel is coming off on your xfires, and how?
    3. I cannot comment on the video hardware problems that you were having, other than that we never had a problem with that. Our xfires are generally dead-on-arrival (yes, that happens with sun, too) or work flawlessly. So far we had only two 4200s make it through the burn-in but fail later on (flakey PSU, flimsy backplane respectively) which is a pretty good ratio when compared to our expiriences with supermicro hardware.
    4. Yes, PXE booting can be disabled for each individual NIC. Read the manual sometime?
    5. You're saying you have "over 50" xfires, yet you keep buying a raid controller that sucks? Honestly, if I were your boss...

    Sorry, either you're just making up shit here or you're the wrong guy for the job.