You are overgeneralizing. Sun's (and Oracle's) main customer base are "people" who use Solaris/Oracle to manage their millions of customers and billions of doll

You are overgeneralizing. Sun's (and Oracle's) main customer base are "people" who use Solaris/Oracle to manage their millions of customers and billions of dollars. They don't want to mess with it, they want support, and will pay for it. The question is, "how much?" -- and Oracle is very good at getting a profitable answer to that question.