4 ms·

Sun had some great people and some good ideas and products, but as a coherent business it was a rolling train wreck.

by alisonkisk 6y ago

hutzlibu 6y ago
Which why they sadly ended up digested by Oracle.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Only after Google sent a couple of torpedoes and then went as if it wasn't their business.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    What torpedoes do you mean?
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Android and ripping Sun off. Then they were hoping that no one would buy them, not even themselves cared to own Java after their trick. So now they push Kotlin, while researching Fuchsia, and keep a bunch of lawyers quite happy.
      - hutzlibu 6y ago
        So implementing and pushing Java in Android was a torpedo against Sun? Interesting logic.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Android Java is not Java, and yes when I take someone's product and don't pay what the license specifies, while introducing an incomplete implementation, that is 100% ripping off. Thankfully we are going to have that settled in the near future, and then Android folks can party all night long with their Kotlin implementation and rename ART into KVM.
        hutzlibu 6y ago
        Despite dalvic and co. it still pushed the Java ecosystem, right? Not what I would call a tornado in the meaning pf destruction. And about the license, well, it is disputed, right? I only read about it tangential, but the case seemed far from crystal clear to me.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        As much as Microsoft did with J++. No one needs Android Java slowing down the Java ecosystem by imposing additional burdens on Java library authors that also want to target Android. Besides Google that is.
        UncleEntity 6y ago
        > Sun Microsystems, Inc. (SUN) hereby grants to you a fully-paid, nonexclusive, nontransferable, perpetual, worldwide limited license (without the right to sublicense) under SUN's intellectual property rights that are essential to practice this specification. This license allows and is limited to the creation and distribution of clean room implementations of this specification that...[list of requirements] AFAICT the whole fight is over API's and not "don't pay what the license specifies" as they give you the ability to do a clean-room implementation without paying royalties.
        WorldMaker 6y ago
        Implementing it from scratch as a skunkworks reverse engineering project designed to never need to pay license fees upstream.
        colejohnson66 6y ago
        Despite the license allowing clean room reverse engineering? Sun kindof shot themselves in the foot with those words.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Where on the license? Please. It explicitly only allowed the use of JavaSE on desktop deployments, OpenJDK was yet to be made available.
      - ezekiel68 6y ago
        I mean... if we took this version of the narrative at face value, I guess we'd all have been better off with no Compaq and hence no commodity PC clones.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Definitely, I miss Amiga, Atari, Acorn and friends, which Apple is the only surviving one. I was the only PC guy on my gang, and that was just due to other factors not commodity.
      - keypusher 6y ago
        So if Google had chosen to use a different language for Android then Sun would still be around? I don't think so.
Mountain_Skies 6y ago
Sun had an unhealthy Microsoft obsession. When I was a senior in college, Microsoft came to campus and gave a two hour presentation on why we should work at Microsoft. About a month later Sun came to campus and gave a two hour presentation on why we should not work at Microsoft. Sun workstations were very common in our engineering program so we were ripe for the picking but Sun never explained to us what was so great about working for them. Well, except for one absolutely ridiculous video clip of Scott McNealy standing on the roof of Sun HQ, playing the electric guitar. Eyes were rolling out of everyone's heads upon seeing that. Looking back at interviews and industry articles from that era, there is a common theme of Sun hating Microsoft. Lots of companies and people hated Microsoft but Sun seemed to make it their central ideology. As a result, they took their eye off of making great technology that customers could use to solve their problems. It's a pity because they were so far ahead of the game at that point that they could have developed into something wonderful instead of being absorbed by Oracle, with little trace left besides Java sleepwalking through the modern era.
- munificent 6y ago
  > Sun had an unhealthy Microsoft obsession. I think basically everyone did back then. There was a pervasive understanding that if you were small enough, Microsoft would use underhanded business practices to crush you if you became a threat. If you made a compelling product, Microsoft would clone it and use their might to make it win. It felt like taking a pottery class with a grizzly bear in the room. Really hard to be like, "I should just make the prettiest bowl I can" when you know at a moment's notice your head might be swiped off.
alasdair_ 6y ago
>Sun had some great people and some good ideas and products, but as a coherent business it was a rolling train wreck. I had an internship at Sun in 2002. I distinctly remember a town-hall meeting hosted by Johnathan Schwartz (CTO at the time, later to be CEO) where an engineer asked something to the effect of "this all sounds great, but how does this actually make us money?" The engineer was told in no uncertain terms that he shouldn't ask such questions, that he should focus on engineering and that he should trust that other people would handle the money side.

Sun had some great people and some good ideas and products, but as a coherent business it was a rolling train wreck.

hutzlibu 6y ago

Which why they sadly ended up digested by Oracle.

pjmlp 6y ago
Only after Google sent a couple of torpedoes and then went as if it wasn't their business.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  What torpedoes do you mean?
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Android and ripping Sun off. Then they were hoping that no one would buy them, not even themselves cared to own Java after their trick. So now they push Kotlin, while researching Fuchsia, and keep a bunch of lawyers quite happy.
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      So implementing and pushing Java in Android was a torpedo against Sun? Interesting logic.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Android Java is not Java, and yes when I take someone's product and don't pay what the license specifies, while introducing an incomplete implementation, that is 100% ripping off. Thankfully we are going to have that settled in the near future, and then Android folks can party all night long with their Kotlin implementation and rename ART into KVM.
        hutzlibu 6y ago
        Despite dalvic and co. it still pushed the Java ecosystem, right? Not what I would call a tornado in the meaning pf destruction. And about the license, well, it is disputed, right? I only read about it tangential, but the case seemed far from crystal clear to me.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        As much as Microsoft did with J++. No one needs Android Java slowing down the Java ecosystem by imposing additional burdens on Java library authors that also want to target Android. Besides Google that is.
        UncleEntity 6y ago
        > Sun Microsystems, Inc. (SUN) hereby grants to you a fully-paid, nonexclusive, nontransferable, perpetual, worldwide limited license (without the right to sublicense) under SUN's intellectual property rights that are essential to practice this specification. This license allows and is limited to the creation and distribution of clean room implementations of this specification that...[list of requirements] AFAICT the whole fight is over API's and not "don't pay what the license specifies" as they give you the ability to do a clean-room implementation without paying royalties.
      - WorldMaker 6y ago
        Implementing it from scratch as a skunkworks reverse engineering project designed to never need to pay license fees upstream.
        colejohnson66 6y ago
        Despite the license allowing clean room reverse engineering? Sun kindof shot themselves in the foot with those words.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Where on the license? Please. It explicitly only allowed the use of JavaSE on desktop deployments, OpenJDK was yet to be made available.
    - ezekiel68 6y ago
      I mean... if we took this version of the narrative at face value, I guess we'd all have been better off with no Compaq and hence no commodity PC clones.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Definitely, I miss Amiga, Atari, Acorn and friends, which Apple is the only surviving one. I was the only PC guy on my gang, and that was just due to other factors not commodity.
    - keypusher 6y ago
      So if Google had chosen to use a different language for Android then Sun would still be around? I don't think so.

Mountain_Skies 6y ago

Sun had an unhealthy Microsoft obsession. When I was a senior in college, Microsoft came to campus and gave a two hour presentation on why we should work at Microsoft. About a month later Sun came to campus and gave a two hour presentation on why we should not work at Microsoft. Sun workstations were very common in our engineering program so we were ripe for the picking but Sun never explained to us what was so great about working for them. Well, except for one absolutely ridiculous video clip of Scott McNealy standing on the roof of Sun HQ, playing the electric guitar. Eyes were rolling out of everyone's heads upon seeing that. Looking back at interviews and industry articles from that era, there is a common theme of Sun hating Microsoft. Lots of companies and people hated Microsoft but Sun seemed to make it their central ideology. As a result, they took their eye off of making great technology that customers could use to solve their problems. It's a pity because they were so far ahead of the game at that point that they could have developed into something wonderful instead of being absorbed by Oracle, with little trace left besides Java sleepwalking through the modern era.

munificent 6y ago
> Sun had an unhealthy Microsoft obsession. I think basically everyone did back then. There was a pervasive understanding that if you were small enough, Microsoft would use underhanded business practices to crush you if you became a threat. If you made a compelling product, Microsoft would clone it and use their might to make it win. It felt like taking a pottery class with a grizzly bear in the room. Really hard to be like, "I should just make the prettiest bowl I can" when you know at a moment's notice your head might be swiped off.

alasdair_ 6y ago

>Sun had some great people and some good ideas and products, but as a coherent business it was a rolling train wreck. I had an internship at Sun in 2002. I distinctly remember a town-hall meeting hosted by Johnathan Schwartz (CTO at the time, later to be CEO) where an engineer asked something to the effect of "this all sounds great, but how does this actually make us money?" The engineer was told in no uncertain terms that he shouldn't ask such questions, that he should focus on engineering and that he should trust that other people would handle the money side.