Everyone complained openly about sun while they were around. They didn’t do everything right, but they were very generous with their open source contributions, all the way to a fault.
The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems [video]
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Re: The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems [video]
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work at Oracle's Java Platform Group, where most of the managers and senior engineers came over from Sun. They all tell me that, despite the normal big-corp issues, work under Oracle's control is better than it was under Sun, where management was more chaotic, strategy unclear, and resources shifted erratically from one project to another, often wasted on unreasonable goals with bad prospects. Not only that, but th…
It makes sense that those who've stayed on under Oracle have a favorable opinion of how Oracle does things: one might say they are self-selected for it.
Good point but still interesting considering Oracle's reputation. One could argue that even those still at Oracle would say "we don't like it but we didn't find something else... we're used to it".
Re: The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems [video]
#63Everyone complained openly about sun while they were around. They didn’t do everything right, but they were very generous with their open source contributions, all the way to a fault.
Absolutely to a fault, although it has helped humanity a lot. Sun's best work is all open-source, and the proprietary work isn't very compelling in comparison.
Re: The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems [video]
#64Everyone has good things to say about Sun, but let's not forget that they tried to monetize Java (even trying to take money from open-source communities like FreeBSD) long before they were acquired by Oracle.
Re: The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems [video]
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would have been instead of the NeXT merger which brought Jobs to Apple. It seems likely a Sun-Apple would have ended up with both companies destroyed, and Steve Jobs might have spent the early 2000s hawking enterprise web dev software like he was doing at NeXT in 1995.
What a different world that would've been! I wonder which company would've made the trailblazing iphone in this alternate reality world...
My supposition has been that, absent Apple to throw their weight behind the iPhone, someone would have created a pure touchscreen device (Android had one such concept under development IIRC) but it would have failed because it would have been just one phone among many, gathering dust at retail stores.
Apple bet the farm on one phone, had the built-in fan base to leverage, and the resources to make it work well from day one.
Re: The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems [video]
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would have been instead of the NeXT merger which brought Jobs to Apple. It seems likely a Sun-Apple would have ended up with both companies destroyed, and Steve Jobs might have spent the early 2000s hawking enterprise web dev software like he was doing at NeXT in 1995.
What a different world that would've been! I wonder which company would've made the trailblazing iphone in this alternate reality world...
Probably Google with Android. They were working on it at roughly the same time as Apple but released it later. This interview with Chet Haase on the CoRecursive podcast is an interesting account of those years:
https://corecursive.com/android-with-chet-haase/
So today Android might have a larger market share. Maybe the Windows Phone would still be a thing.
Re: The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems [video]
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
In addition to other events, Sun entered dotcom boom a bit from a wounded position due to high volume of recalls caused by radioactive cache in what was to be flagship processor. Meanwhile IBM had a lot more revenue streams (including still x86 machines on low end, AS/400 on middle size, and Mainframe and supercomputing business at the top) that weren't much impacted by fickle nature of dotcom.
Radioactive cache? Sun shipped radioactive parts to customers?
I think I remember the problem was something like bit flips due to alpha decay from trace material in the chips’ packaging. Not physically dangerous but hard to diagnose and fix.
Re: The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems [video]
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
What a different world that would've been! I wonder which company would've made the trailblazing iphone in this alternate reality world...
My supposition has been that, absent Apple to throw their weight behind the iPhone, someone would have created a pure touchscreen device (Android had one such concept under development IIRC) but it would have failed because it would have been just one phone among many, gathering dust at retail stores. Apple bet the farm on one phone, had the built-in fan base to leverage, and the resources to make it work well from d…
the iphone was also symbiotic outgrowth of the massive ipod success
Re: The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems [video]
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work at Oracle's Java Platform Group, where most of the managers and senior engineers came over from Sun. They all tell me that, despite the normal big-corp issues, work under Oracle's control is better than it was under Sun, where management was more chaotic, strategy unclear, and resources shifted erratically from one project to another, often wasted on unreasonable goals with bad prospects. Not only that, but th…
It makes sense that those who've stayed on under Oracle have a favorable opinion of how Oracle does things: one might say they are self-selected for it.
In particular, it excludes very senior people who left almost immediately after the takeover, due to differences with Oracle management -- most notably James Gosling. https://www.eweek.com/development/java-creator-james-gosling...
Re: The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems [video]
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
would they have been better had their sale been to google? Coz that was the only possible alternative outcome tbh. At least it seems oracle's stewardship of java is good enough (atm at least...).
IBM was the other offer on the table. Scott managed to scuttle the deal but his ability to do so was far from a certainty since he was already out as CEO. Google was pretty much incompatible, they had no interest in workstations or paying for quality as their focus was redundant arrays on inexpensive machines. Fujitsu was the best actual option for commercial compatibility, but everyone felt it would be a waste of ti…
Although Sun and Fujitsu had a long-standing business and development relationship, I think it would also have been problematic from a strategy and cultural perspective. My observation with the 3 big Japanese computer companies (NEC and Hitachi being the others) in the 2000s is that they aspired to be major global computer system suppliers--but weren't willing to actually make the investments to make such a thing possible.
I didn't think at the time that IBM was a good fit. I'm not so sure now in retrospect--though they would have had to rationalize the Unix business in particular.