I worked at Sun during that time period, and as much as they liked to pretend they were a software business, they were a hardware business whose primary feature

I worked at Sun during that time period, and as much as they liked to pretend they were a software business, they were a hardware business whose primary feature was software, which is really, really not the same thing. They never really figured out how to be in the software business if it wasn't in service of selling hardware. Such an amazing fail.