Errr, I may not have made it clear, but Sun did make commodity hardware, as in AMD and later Intel server boxes that would run Linux: http://en.wikipedia.org/wi

Errr, I may not have made it clear, but Sun did make commodity hardware, as in AMD and later Intel server boxes that would run Linux: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems#x86-based_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems#x86-based_syst... Not "cheap", but of at least perceived high quality, and something that many startups found attractive. The latter just couldn't actually buy these boxes in sufficient quantity. Lots of companies suffer because they screw up their sales, fail in that sort of basic blocking and tackling.