Are you acting stupid on purpose? Maybe to lure your competitors (you know, the ones kicking your ass in the growing Linux market) into a false sense of security?
No, wait. That can't be it. Because the words you speak do a good job of matching what Sun's actually doing about Linux: not much.
In this article, I'm particularly amused by a few quotes.
"We think the big winner with Linux will be on the desktop," said Scott McNealy during a Q&A session at Forrester Research's technology and finance conference here.
Heh, okay. Do you care to explain how that's going to happen and how Sun will be taking advantage of it?
"The real challenge for Sun," he conceded, is that it was "late to x86," referring to Sun's decision last year to support Intel's x86 processor architecture with its non-SPARC processor platforms.
Yeah, right. That's your problem. Missing the x86 boat. Whatever.
Why don't you just tell people what they already know instead of shifting the focus away from your company's obvious problems? You underestimated Linux and Linux on x86. You bought a company with expertise in that area but it doesn't appear to have been given a chance to flourish as part of Sun. Sure, the LX50 is great, but it's an isolated product that was far, far too late to market.
Sun customers are all looking at Linux as a replacement for Solaris. What are you doing to help that process? Telling them "yes, you can run Linux software on Solaris!" Somehow, I don't think that's what they had in mind. It's shame that they're going to non-Sun companies for the help, isn't it?
And when are you going to wrap your brain around how important Linux is to one of Sun's more important technologies? You know, the Java programming language?
Posted by jzawodn at May 09, 2003 01:01 PM
i agree with your comments Jerry. I used to work for Cobalt (the Linux company that Sun bought), until they made a lot of us redundant,and forced a lot of others to resign, including some of our brightest and best Linux engineers.
Sun missed the boat completely - they had the opportunity with Cobalt, but they totally misread the market situation.
Fast forward to today, and I read somewhere that Wall Street is moving onto Linux to cut costs - and Wall Street was one of Suns top customers.
Go figure!
