I worked with and around a lot of the Sun folks, including founders. I just ran into this and enjoyed the reading. Thought I'd add this document. Sun brought some awesome culture to the Silicon Valley with their pranks. https://www.sunreunion.com/pdfs/Facts-at-a-Glance-April-Fool...
The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems [video]
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Re: The Dawn and Dusk of Sun Microsystems [video]
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked at a company in about 2002-5 that was selling software to mobile phone carriers. They were still exclusively Sun hardware. And that was probably the last time I used Sun hardware. I have no recollection of why McNealy left, but I’m not sure Schwartz was the right person for the job. He did some good work for forwarding the case for FOSS, but it always seemed to come at the expense of Sun.
I don't see how Sun's could have successfully navigated the Linux on commodity x86 onslaught without becoming a services company. Google and Facebook would have been huge Sun customers pre-dotcom-bust, before Linux/x86 got a solid foothold. Both server hardware and software got commoditized, leaving Sun no complement to monetize.
> I don't see how Sun's could have successfully navigated the Linux on commodity x86
Sorry for necromancing your comment, but we only need to look at Apple - they make RISC-based Unix workstations today. For servers it's always been a game of either providing something others can't have (think IBM mainframes and POWER systems) or competing in price with razor-thin margins. When Sun started making x86 boxes, I knew it was game over.