Ex-Sun Chief Dishes Dirt On Gates, Jobs 241
alphadogg writes "Former CEO of Sun Microsystems Jonathan Schwartz has taken to his personal blog, provocatively titled 'What I couldn't say ...,' to dish some industry dirt and tell his side of the story about the demise of Sun. He has already hinted at plans to write a book, and a new post suggests a tell-all tome could indeed be in the offing. 'I feel for Google — Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too,' Schwartz writes, apparently referring to Apple's patent lawsuit against HTC, which makes Google's Nexus One smartphone. As for Bill Gates, Schwartz says he was threatening regarding Sun's efforts in the office software space."
Re:So he was the CEO of a huge multinational compa (Score:3, Informative)
(hey, I wonder why Disney and Pixar team up so often?)
You've got your order of execution backwards. Jobs didn't hold huge shares of Disney until after Disney bought into Pixar.
Re:Going for fanboy of the day are we? (Score:1, Informative)
The patent system was not intended to be used like this. It is SUPPOSED to encourage invention for the benefit of society; NOT for the greed of a company. You invent something, you have a little time as the sole provider of said invention to make your R&D money back (plus some), then EVERYONE is free to use what you discovered and IMPROVE upon it for the benefit of the public (and to prevent a market monopoly).
Oracle is irritating (Score:3, Informative)
Does anyone else find the Oracle branding all over the Sun pages disturbing? They are also cancelling the Sun training programs, saying that you will have to sign up for Oracle Academy - at many times the price. In a nutshell, Oracle is acting as though Sun will be entirely dismantled, and cease to exist as an entity.
It may be time to move away from Java...
Re:Valuable Java Patents (Score:4, Informative)
Java and the JVM's advantages aren't really over C but over statically compiled OO languages like C++.
When you write an app in C++ and use a lot of OO techniques, it causes your application to perform all kinds of lookups and lots of indirection at runtime while resolving virtual calls, etc. Because it's compiled statically, you're always going to pay a huge cost if your application is complex and there's no way to fix it because the application's memory image is... static.
However with Java and other similar technologies like .NET, which can alter and optimize the application at runtime, these types of OO-based indirections can be nearly eliminated if they're part of a bottleneck. The virtual machine can literally devirtualize virtual functions on the fly.
Since C is a much simpler language (good for systems development), these indirections don't exist and a well written C app will probably always be faster than it's Java (or C++) equivalent. It will just be harder to maintain as it grows more complex.
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Informative)
http://code.sixapart.com/trac/TheSchwartz [sixapart.com]
Re:Don't shit where you eat (Score:5, Informative)
There is a reason that guys like Larry Ellison, Scott McNealy, Lou Gerstner, Philippe Kahn, and others were vocal but reserved regarding Microsoft's _business_ practices and methods. These were the few who had the balls to speak up and has the skills to stay on the side of the line which prevented them from getting thrown out for saying too much and looking too unprofessional. Hundreds and probably thousands of others just swallowed their pride and let Microsoft dictate what they could and could not do in their business. For instance, HP and Intel executives kept their mouths shut even though Microsoft was telling Intel to stay out of the software business and shut down their work on both Java and recently Linux. HP was threatened over and over and at one point a phone call the night before the largest computer show in the world was about to open resulted in HP instructing people to work overnight to remove HP computers from the showroom floor because Microsoft did not approve of the software they were running.
Schwartz may have not had the balls to speak up when he was running the show but he most likely has decided he does not want to keep quiet any longer regarding how these industry bullies tried to direct the products he and his former company produced. Good for him and I hope he lets em rip. We already know that court documents showing these things does not make for interesting news nor educate people of the ways some companies have slowed the tech sector over the last 20 years. Maybe a juicy book will make some waves and proves educational to those who remain clueless of what's really been going on behind the scenes.
LoB
Re:Oracle is irritating (Score:1, Informative)
This isn't true about the training. I was signed up for a virtual live training class and Oracle raised the price $100. They honored the price I paid. I'm trying to get into a second class and Oracle has _lowered_ the price by $300.
Re:Oracle is irritating (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Going for fanboy of the day are we? (Score:2, Informative)
If you don't enforce your patents, you lose them. So yes, you do have to enforce them.