[conspire] Christian draws out a Sun Microsystems guy

Wed May 4 17:42:44 PDT 2005

On Tuesday 03 May 2005 22:15, Adrien Lamothe wrote:
> Since the thread is several levels deep, I'll just cut
> and paste. Quoting Christian:
>
> "Ultimately, I believe that open source is as
> unstoppable as a rising tide.  I believe that we will
> see gcj and other open solutions to the Java problem.
> I do believe that Simon Phipps cares about open
> source, but he, like others at Sun, are trying to
> figure out a graceful way to recover from the
> disruptive Linux wave that has hammered Sun. Linux is
> in the process of mauling Sun the same way that the
> telephone mauled Western Union and transistors mauled
> RCA. They are disruptive technologies, and I believe
> that Sun is trying to cope with the demands of Wall
> Street to ride out this Linux tsunami."
>
> -- There are several factors affecting Sun's
> performance over the past several years, and Linux is
> but one of them (and not necessarily the most
> significant.)

What are some of the other factors?

>
> -------------------------------------------------------
>
> "...  But the problem is that right now, Wall Street
> still has not understood how to open source will fit
> into the business environment, other than the areas
> where Apache and Linux have already become
> established."
>
> -- Wall Street knows that any technology which lowers
> the cost of doing business will benefit those
> businesses able to utilize it. It may hurt some
> technology companies, but that's life in the business
> world, some businesses gain at the expense of others.

Wall Street is often caught flat footed.  Harvard biz prof Clayton 
Christensen found that between 1955 and 1995, 95% of Fortune 50 
companies stalled to growth levels of slightly above GDP.  In some 
senses, that fact is what triggered his research that ultimately 
led to his books "The Innovator's Dilemma", "The Innovator's 
Solution", and "Seeing What's Next".  He was trying to explain that 
slow growth after success phenomenon.  Ultimately, he created the 
phrase "disruptive technology" to explain the phenomenon.  

For example, Wall Street didn't anticipate the arrival of the 
transistor, because there was no proven *market segment* to deploy 
the transistor en masse when it first arrived.  It was not until an 
upstart company called Sony put the transistors into hand-held 
radios and actually sold those radios in Macy's (a non-traditional 
forum) that Wall Street responded to transistors.  

Right now, everyone believes in Microsoft, but Linux is about to 
slowly erode Microsoft market share.

> "But I do think that we should have more sympathy and
> gratitude for Sun.  It did create OOo, which is a
> marvelous gift to the world, and Java will never be a
> .Net lockdown.  My only concern is that Sun will not
> open source Java in time, and something else will come
>
> along that is truly open, and Sun will be left
> clinging to a proprietary commodity whose time has
> come and gone."
>
> -- Sun didn't create OpenOffice. OpenOffice is the
> free version of StarOffice, which Sun (very wisely)
> acquired from StarDivision. 

Sun open sourced OOo.  That is what I meant by a "gift".  Sun could 
have let StarOffice (SO) rot on the shelf, or just stay in house to 
reduce the number of copies of Microsoft Office that they would 
have had to use. 

> Sun has retained engineers 
> to continue development of StarOffice & OpenOffice.

+1

That is quite an expensive git to the world.

> Sun didn't do this to give a "marvelous gift to the
> world;" they did it as a strategic move against
> Microsoft. 

+1

I was looking at the end result, not so much Sun's intent.  The end 
result is that I can share a robust office suite with non-profits 
without worrying about licensing issues. 

Also, I appreciate a diversified market.  I think that it really 
takes balls to stand up to Microsoft, and I think that we currently 
would all be in deep doo-doo if Sun hadn't open sourced OOo.  OOo 
is eventually going to replace Microsoft Office as the dominant 
office productivity suite on the planet, but without a major corp 
like Sun to push OOo, it never would have reached critical mass, 
and MS would own all of our data by say 2009 or so.   AbiWord was 
not good enough and still is not good enough for the mainstream.  
OOo is now good enough for the mainstream desktop. 

> MS Office accounts for 20% or more of 
> Microsoft's revenue and is a big reason businesses use
> Windows.

+1

Larry Lessig said during his speech at OSBC 2005 that a monopolist 
will spend the future value of the company minus one dollar US to 
defend its monopoly.  We can anticipate a very very vicious fight 
from this vicious monopolist, and IMHO we need corporate allies to 
do it.  

I am not saying that Sun is angelic.  Nor am I a corporate stoodge 
who believes that "what is good for GM is good for America" be it 
North America or South America.  Unbridled wealth is unbridled 
power, and power needs to be checked and restrained.  

But IMHO, without the Linux kernel, the GNU part of the operating 
system would not be as widespread as it now it is.  In many senses, 
this discussion is only a subset of the greater discussion between 
the FL and the OSS halves of the free libre open source software 
community.  It's a balance between vision and pragmatism.  

Would I have preferred to see Sun have opened Solaris from the 
beginning on the GPL?  Yes.  Would I like to see Sun open source 
Java under a GPL license?  Yes.  Am I grumpy at Sun because they 
have not open sourced Java?  No.  I am a big believer in the open 
source saying "what you can, how you can, when you can."  Market 
pressures will eventually force Sun to open source Java ONLY IF 
Microsoft doesn't first kill Sun and stomp on open source.  
Microsoft will spend billions trying to push OSS and OSS vendors 
off of the map, as they did with WP, a former market leading 
program.  

The network is the computer, the network is Sun's biz, and the 
viability of the network depends upon the viability of OSS.  I like 
having Sun in our camp, and I like having Sun dependent on the 
success of Open Solaris and OOo / SO as part of its future biz 
plans.  

>
>
> This has been a very entertaining discussion. Thanks
> guys.

+1

>
> -- Adrien
>
>
>
>
>
>
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