I should add that Sun died of its contradictions: - Java, "write once run anywhere" meant openness. SPARC meant closedness. Conflict. - Java, "write once ru

I should add that Sun died of its contradictions: - Java, "write once run anywhere" meant openness. SPARC meant closedness. Conflict. - Java, "write once run anywhere" meant openness. J2ME and J2SE cash cows meant closedness. Conflict -- in the same team! - x86 systems division meant openness. SPARC meant closedness. Conflict. - The Sun directory services product was profitable and then Active Directory came along, but rather than acquire or build AD interoperability in the early 00s the Sun DS team chose to keep milking their cow, which led to closedness in what originally had been an openness tool. There's a lesson in here for business schools. Something about how short-lived cash cows can be in software and even hardware (now that platform portability has become so much easier). Also maybe about how if you want to charge a premium and get customers to want to pay for it, you have to live up to a reputation for constant innovation. A comparison to Apple almost seems apt, but Apple sells to a different class of customer (consumers), so maybe not.