[conspire] Christian draws out a Sun Microsystems guy

[Adrien Lamothe]

--- Christian EiEinfeldteieinfeldtaearthlinket> wrote:


> What are some of the other factors?

I'm not in the habit of dispensing free management
consulting, so it is best to forego an answer here.


> Wall Street is often caught flat footed.
...
>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.  

The transistor was a completely new technology. Linux
is essentially a free version of Unix, and most other
open-source software projects have their proprietary
counterparts. Open source software functions the same
as and serves the same purpose of proprietary
software, the difference being that the user gets the
source code and the right to modify it. So, from a
business perspective the open-source phenomenon is
really nothing more than an efficiency improvement.
Wall Street understands how efficiency improvements
work.


> Sun open sourced OO. 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.

Strange statement, given your agreement with the
subsequent points.


> 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.

Yes, the end result is good. But then again it has to
be if Sun plans on succeeding with OO.


> 
> 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 OO. OO
> 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 OO or 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.  
> OO is now good enough for the mainstream desktop. 

The current high growth area for Linux is the server
market. The server market isn't sensitive to office
suites. OO may indeed facilitate adoption of Linux as
a desktop operating system, but other companies are in
a position to release Linux office suites if they
really want to (Adobe comes to mind.) This is not to
marginalize OO; it is an excellent product. Yes,
having alternatives is good for the consumer.
 

> But IMHO, without the Linux kernel, the GNU part of
> the operating 
> system would not be as widespread as it now it is.

Linux and GNU enjoy a symbiotic relationship. GNU runs
on platforms other than Linux; this would be true even
if Linux never happened.


>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.

Microsoft isn't going to put Sun out of business.


>The network is the computer, the network is Sun's
biz,
>and the
>viability of the network depends upon the viability
of >OSS.

Hmmm... I thought the network was Cisco's biz. The
viability of the network dependant on OSS? That's a
stretch.


>I like having Sun in our camp, and I like having Sun
>dependent on the
>success of Open Solaris and OO / SO as part of its
>future biz plans.

Which camp are you referring to? Sun is pretty much on
their own at this point. Though they do have some
mutual interests with other companies, their
relationships with those companies are not
particularly committed. The only clearly defined camp
Sun is aligned with is the Unix camp (and the SCO suit
has caused some major rifts in that camp.) Sun is
basically standing on its own, which is the way
they've always preferred to do business.






		
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