Ex-Sun Chief Dishes Dirt On Gates, Jobs

alphadogg writes "Former CEO of Sun Microsystems Jonathan Schwartz has taken to his personal blog, provocatively titled 'What I couldn't say ...,' to dish some industry dirt and tell his side of the story about the demise of Sun. He has already hinted at plans to write a book, and a new post suggests a tell-all tome could indeed be in the offing. 'I feel for Google — Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too,' Schwartz writes, apparently referring to Apple's patent lawsuit against HTC, which makes Google's Nexus One smartphone. As for Bill Gates, Schwartz says he was threatening regarding Sun's efforts in the office software space."

Comments

Re:Don't shit where you eat

[Locutus]

and just maybe he is wealthy enough to not care about those who made efforts to use their market positions to bully he and his company regarding what products they did or did not produce or support. Competing is one thing but when you start calling and threatening or start calling all your customers and threaten them, you take the gloves off at a time that's right for you. Maybe now is that time for Jonathan Schwartz.

There is a reason that guys like Larry Ellison, Scott McNealy, Lou Gerstner, Philippe Kahn, and others were vocal but reserved regarding Microsoft's _business_ practices and methods. These were the few who had the balls to speak up and has the skills to stay on the side of the line which prevented them from getting thrown out for saying too much and looking too unprofessional. Hundreds and probably thousands of others just swallowed their pride and let Microsoft dictate what they could and could not do in their business. For instance, HP and Intel executives kept their mouths shut even though Microsoft was telling Intel to stay out of the software business and shut down their work on both Java and recently Linux. HP was threatened over and over and at one point a phone call the night before the largest computer show in the world was about to open resulted in HP instructing people to work overnight to remove HP computers from the showroom floor because Microsoft did not approve of the software they were running.

Schwartz may have not had the balls to speak up when he was running the show but he most likely has decided he does not want to keep quiet any longer regarding how these industry bullies tried to direct the products he and his former company produced. Good for him and I hope he lets em rip. We already know that court documents showing these things does not make for interesting news nor educate people of the ways some companies have slowed the tech sector over the last 20 years. Maybe a juicy book will make some waves and proves educational to those who remain clueless of what's really been going on behind the scenes.

LoB