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."
yawn.... (Score:0, Insightful)
I hate MS as much as the next guy (er slashdotter)... but this whole article reads as 'gates said THIS and then I said THAT and he shut his mouth and the conversation ended!'.
Sun is a horrible company. McNeally was a clown. Schwartz filled his big ol shoes really well. Print your book... as many people will buy it as bought.... anything you've sold in the last 5 years. You can join Raph Koster in the 'I wrote a book and no one cared' section.
Re:So he was the CEO of a huge multinational compa (Score:4, Insightful)
A CEO of a company cannot go about leaking any information that could damage the company unless he ok with all the shareholders suing him.
And a CEO does not necessarily own the company he runs, meaning he can(and would) be replaced.
Don't shit where you eat (Score:5, Insightful)
CEOs especially have to be careful. They don't want to piss off their biggest customers. Nor do they want to say anything that might negatively affect their stock price. And that could be anything, especially whinging on about Gates or Jobs.
Shooting your mouth off about everyone in the business is not a good way to win friends and influence people.
Sun had 20 years, and still lost the OS battle.... (Score:2, Insightful)
...which means that any dirt dished will seem like sour grapes, and be ignored - so I guess at least he'll be consistent
Re:So he was the CEO of a huge multinational compa (Score:4, Insightful)
These threats, and counter threats, happen all the time. He says so himself in the article, which is why they needed a good base of patents.
Not exactly damaging to the company.
Going for fanboy of the day are we? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sun had 20 years, and still lost the OS battle. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Threat or Warning (Score:5, Insightful)
"I love how people are eager to describe it as "Steve threatening to sue" when I see it as Steve showing an industry colleague the respect they deserve and picking up the phone himself to make a personal, direct call to provide advance warning and give the other company the chance to remedy the problem before the lawyers are unleashed."
Yes I always appreciated the bully saying "Give me your lunch money, nerd" before actually punching me in the face and then taking my lunch money. The robber who said "Hand over your wallet" is such a friend.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, what do you expect from a competitor?
To release a better, or cheaper product.
Re:Threat or Warning (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not anti-patent. I hold a patent in fact but it is a hardware patent.
Software like stories, music, and math really should not be patentable.
I can understand Apple getting software patents just as Sun, IBM, and other companies do and as was explained in the blog they make a great defense. When any software company goes after another company with patents they are being a patent troll and are being evil.
Microsoft going after Tom Tom and Amazon with Linux patents == evil.
Apple going after HTC == evil.
In both of these cases it was double evil. Do you really think that Jobs was showing "respect"? Or that Gates was?
Both where hoping to bully their way to eliminate a potental threat.
Both where hoping that they could get Sun to give up a project with only a small chance of profit with at threat of a law suit.
Do you honestly think that Microsoft and Apple think they never infringe on anybodies patents?
Please it was a nasty business tactic and by all rights evil. Of course Jobs and Gates are sitting on giant money mountians and Jonathan Schwartz is posting on a Wordpress blog so being evil and nasty seems to pay.
Boy I wish Google had bought Sun. Not that Google is with out sin but I would love to see Google have OO.org, Netbeans, ZFS, and Solaris. Maybe they would have even made ZFS GPL. I would classify Google as a lesser evil at this time.
Re:Going for fanboy of the day are we? (Score:2, Insightful)
custom chips? no the iphone uses standard stuff - top of the line, maye, but readily available.
candybar keyboard less design with only one big screen? nothing new there.
probably the only stuff truly patentable on the iphone is the jack connecting the headphones.
so yes apple is trolling, in any sense of the term.
Re:Going for fanboy of the day are we? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would expect Apple to do what most companies do---use their patent portfolios defensively. Apple doesn't though, they use it as a weapon. There's nothing that says that Apple is obligated to enforce patents, doing so is within their rights but it doesn't make them ethical. What goes around comes around. Nothing I like more than seeing patent scumbags get what they have coming and that includes Apple.
Curiously, everything you described that "suggests" that Apple was being magnanimous could also be said of Microsoft. They are a large company with a substantial investment in IP and Bill Gates was most surely just giving Sun a heads up on their Office infringement, right?
Re:Threat or Warning (Score:2, Insightful)
I may not be a Mensa member but I think I may be smart enough to describe that as "Steve threatening to sue...."
Re:Grow Up@ - God! I hope not! (Score:1, Insightful)
Personally I think all these CEO's need to grow up and realize all they are doing is hampering technology and the advancement of the human race.
"Adults" don't take wild-ass risks on pie-in-the-sky technologies. What I'm saying is, if Jobs wasn't the wing-nut that he is, he would never have got Apple going. Wozniak would have made his hobby computer, sold it in electronics magazines and right now there would be posts saying, "Hey, remember that Apple computer kit from the '70s, that was kind of neat! It was based on the 6502."
With others chiming in...kind of like how folks talk about that kit computer that I can't even remember.
Anyway, most entrepreneurs on the scale of Jobs, Ellison, Gates, etc... are head cases who couldn't work in corporate America even if they tried because they're just too out of the box. Corporate America wouldn't hire them or if they did, they wouldn't last. Which is a GOOD THING because corporate America has no imagination, thinks rigidly, and is more concerned with the status quo.
P.S, if any of you are entrepreneurs or inventors, leave corporate America - they'll just crush you and your ideas and you'll grow old and bitter always wondering "what if". In the meantime, the executives and the salespeople and the HR people go on with their over paid cushy jobs.
Re:So he was the CEO of a huge multinational compa (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sun had 20 years, and still lost the OS battle. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is to Bill Gates. And that makes it a battle for everyone.
Re:Going for fanboy of the day are we? (Score:1, Insightful)
Patents give patents a bad name. When everyone's playing dirty pool, maybe you have to as well to stay in the game... but it doesn't mean it's not dirty pool.
Re:Threat or Warning (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Threat or Warning (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple is famous for that sort of thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple once sued Microsoft on the theory that Windows infringed on the "look and feel" of Mac OS, so it's not at all surprising they would threaten to do the same to Sun over the look and feel of Looking Glass. It's just Apple being Apple, and Jobs being a dick, as usual.
Apple's litigious nature is one of the reasons I tend to avoid Apple products (I do have an iPod, but that's all).
Re:Gates and Jobs.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually Sun already was on the ground when Schwarz took over....
Re:Book about Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
The Amazon.com review says the book "... presents a harsher and messier history, sharply questioning Microsoft's ethics and corporate wisdom..."
From the same Amazon review:
"Both stand open to the charge of having an ax to grind, and the reader senses a lot of personal animosity at work."
The book seems authoritative; the authors certainly had inside access to the facts.
Emphasis on "seems." The Amazon reviewer you quoted further mentions that some of the information was already available, and that "... most of the new information presented has the ring, at least, of probability."
Not a strong endorsement of this book as "the reality of Microsoft." Probably an interesting and amusing read, but one that needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
Re:Valuable Java Patents (Score:1, Insightful)
You JVM advocates always throw out that "faster than C" line. I know, I know, you can prove it, too, using one of your many highly-controlled microbenchmarks that have absolutely no relevance in the real world.
I know, I know, bytecode and JIT compilation allows for CPU-specific optimizations to be done. That's great, except that even the best JVMs today don't do that.
I know, I know, the JVM is more secure. That's great, except that bounds checking does have significant overhead, and in real-world Java apps it can become a significant problem.
Face it, Java is slow, and the situation hasn't really improved since the mid-1990s when Java was first released. The only reason we don't notice as often today that it's goddamn slow is because hardware has become tens of thousands of times faster in that same time period. Yes, the hardware designers saved your ass.
Re:Gates and Jobs.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They sued MS for infringing on Java, won $20 million and then sued again which ended with a settlement out of court for $2 billion.
Are you referring to the famous suit where Sun sued Microsoft for violating the very clear licensing terms for Java because they created a similar-but-not-quite-compatible implementation of Java, thus diluting the Java brand and threatening to fracture the market?
If so, how on earth is that even *remotely* similar to patent trolling?
Re:Good stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Threat or Warning (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple use off the shelf components, stuff that real innovative companies design and manufacturer to enable companies like apple to make their shiny toys.
I bet you also said Apple is evil for using proprietary parts.
BTW, what are your thoughts on the A4?
Re:Gates and Jobs.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sun sued Microsoft for breach of contract. Microsoft distributed a version of Java that was not compatible with Sun's in violation of an agreement between the two companies.
It's not even close to the same as a patent lawsuit. Companies should be forced to keep contracts that they agree to.
Re:Gates and Jobs.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should anyone care what he has to say about people who did what he couldn't?
... because success in business is the be-all and end-all of human value?
For one thing, success in business has a lot to do with luck and the situation you're dropped into. It's well known that Gates lucked into a deal with IBM, without which Microsoft would not be in the position it's in now. Granted, he made some savvy decisions along the way, but Microsoft's success isn't all his doing.
But besides all that, even if we assume that Jobs and Gates are the most brilliant minds in business today, that doesn't mean that they're the most insightful and wise people to listen to. It certainly doesn't mean that it's not worth listening to anyone else.
Even if we stipulated that Schwartz was a crappy businessman, he still might have a lot of knowledge and understanding about the realities of the world of software development. He might know some things that Gates and Jobs don't, and he'll certainly be willing to tell you things that Gates and Jobs aren't.
(I don't really know much about Schwartz or care if you listen to him. I just find your dismissiveness misguided.)
Re:Threat or Warning (Score:3, Insightful)
I see it as Steve showing an industry colleague the respect they deserve and picking up the phone himself to make a personal, direct call to provide advance warning and give the other company the chance to remedy the problem before the lawyers are unleashed.
Picking up the phone is a hell of a lot cheaper than unleashing lawyers, so I think your "what a nice guy" is a bit unwarranted.
Seriously, I know it's cool to hate on Apple lately
Not Apple Hate, but hatred of the way rich people behave these days. Maybe I was naive in my young days, but it didn't seem like the rich were all sociopaths back then like it does now.
Of course, back then the young poor didn't walk around with their underwear showing and spouting obscenities in front of old ladies like they do now, so maybe today's rich are just being assholes like everyone else. They're just trying to fit in to society!
Re:Good stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
Or! We could require that people in service industries be paid a reasonable, livable wage, and not be forced to rely on the vagaries of my poor math skills.
Re:Sun had 20 years, and still lost the OS battle. (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.centos.org/ [centos.org]
"Red Hat has milked the support model about as far as it can go."
Which explains, of course, their continuous growth over the past 7 years, their profitable spread into the middleware market with JBoss, and their acquisition of dozens of smaller open source companies. Yes, the model is really starting to show cracks.
"This is why, if they wished, IBM or Apple could buy Red Hat with spare pocket change if they wanted to."
Red Hat is growing as a business. Sure, IBM or Apple could probably pull together the $5 billion it would take to buy out Red Hat, but that does not mean that Red Hat is a failing business or that their business model is flawed. It just means that they are not as big or old -- Apple had years of business before Red Hat was even conceived of, and IBM has had decades to grow into the giant it is today.
"Software, as we presently know it, is still a product."
Except that, unlike most products, software is trivial to copy, even for someone with no experience with computers. Software does not age; if software from 20 years ago is bad today, it is because it was just as bad back then. It is not a product the way a car is a product, or the way a bushel of apples is a product.
That is the reason that the open source development model is so successful for software -- because software is not like other "products." I can take some software and make a lot of copies of it, without spending a significant amount of money, time, or effort. When you find a way to do that with your car, we might see successful open source development of automobiles.
Red Hat takes advantage of the open source development model and has turned it into a very profitable business. Red Hat only hires a fraction of the number of developers that its competitors hire, but they have a lot of other people collaborating with them on their software. That is where the success comes from: Red Hat does not have to hire a developer to work on every single feature in RHEL or JBoss, because other companies and interested individuals collaborate with them. There is no need for Red Hat to pay every single Linux kernel developer, at least not with dollars and cents; there is just an understanding that Red Hat will put some effort in, just like everyone else, and everyone can use any other developer's work however they choose.
If Sun had GPL'ed Solaris, and followed the model they follow with OpenOffice.org/StarOffice, or the RHEL/Fedora model, they could have committed more resources to their more profitable ventures, without having to lose a solid and well established "product" in the mean time. Solaris was not really a big money maker toward the end, because like most proprietary Unixes, it was being killed by GNU/Linux (at least in the server rooms, where it mattered). They could have continued to sell support as part of their hardware support business, but without the added overhead of having to commit so many skilled developers to Solaris.
You should not discount the competitive advantage that GPLed code can bring, particularly when there is a large community of interested companies and individuals that are willing to cooperate on the software. OpenOffice.org would not be worth anyone's time if there was not a community working on it; same with Apache, GNU, Linux, or any of the other successful open source projects out there. The GPL does not just mean giving away code; it means getting code in return, often more than was given. That is how Red Hat works, and that is why they are able to focus their resources on support.
Re:Threat or Warning (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple is evil not because it re-sells consumer parts (screens, CPU's, HDD's) but because it re-sells consumer parts under false pretences. Namely that these are superior to the the same off the shelf components (complete with rigged benchmarks) and are advertised as "Apple(TM)" components not Intel or Samsung. Also requiring the graphics cards to run special firmware to prevent an identical, cheaper Leadtek graphics card from being used is pretty damn evil.
Dell and the like do not make any such pretences. Sticking a generic video card into a Dell will void my warranty but Dell do nothing to stop me.
I dislike the A4 for similar reason, it is a straight copy of an ARM A9 Cortex but being sold as an "Apple developed processor" (at least they had the common courtesy to license it rather then steal it). It does have a proprietary extension/component, given Apple's Modus Operandi this is presumably to prevent future versions of Apple operating system from running on non Apple hardware (al a the hackintosh but a generic ARM version). Whilst this is not illegal (my first example is borderline fraud) it is most definitely evil.
Re:Sun had 20 years, and still lost the OS battle. (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, Red Hat's user base is growing, at least in terms of customers and support contracts.
"So I guess firewalls, spam, etc. which combined would destroy Win95 would do so simply because 95 was rubbish to begin with?"
Yes, that is exactly correct. Windows 95 was an improvement over 3.1, but that is not saying much and it certainly does not mean that it is "good software." On the other hand, there are places still running programs written 20 years ago, which have only seen bugfixes and ports to newer hardware; the software is just as good now as it was when it was first written.
"Or will a non-computer person find cracking Win7 that easy?"
The fact that it needs to be cracked is the result of Microsoft desperately fighting to stop people from copying software, and establish a mindset where copying software is difficult and illegal. A "non-computer person" could easily make a copy of Fedora -- all they would need is a blank DVD and a DVD burner, and maybe 10 seconds of searching the web. What is your point, exactly? That when software is designed to be hard to copy, it is hard to copy?
"You fail to deal with the cost of after-sales support, as well as increased costs for administration and total cost for mass-implementation."
Which has nothing to do with anything I said, but OK, I'll bite. What is the cost of after sales support for proprietary software, and where did you get the idea that it is lower than open source? Where did you get the idea that administration of open source systems comes with increased cost? Last I checked, it requires fewer IT pros to manage Linux servers than Windows servers, and those same Linux servers can handle a higher workload.
"A good example is Active Directory - it's been around for 10 years, and yet for most of those years the Linux community spent more time complaining that 'it was only LDAP with bells on' while totally failing to provide an equivalent"
Who failed to provide an equivalent? The only thing that was not provided was a GUI, and if that is your complaint, there is really no point in continuing.
"So, if you *don't* use Windows, you can kiss goodbye to Single Sign-on, Enterprise encryption, Direct Access, Central Management, Federated Services...the list is quite long."
The list is only long when you have no idea what you are talking about. You can get all of those things with RHEL or SLED, and had you taken the time to check, or at least ask Red Hat or Novell about it, you would have already known that.
"I also remember the knives coming out for RedHat when they dared to do something as revolutionary as automatic updating"
I do not, mostly because it was Mandrake who started it in the Linux world, and nobody was angry about it.
"And Apple had 'years of business' - when they weren't sacking their CEO, buying their next OS off of him and then re-employing him anyway, *after* MS had bailed them out in order to preserve some pretence of competition."
Apple also had a lot of time to establish itself as a brand and to become associated with a certain type of personal computer. Apple was always in a position to reclaim some market share, they just lacked the proper leadership to do so until Steve Jobs returned. All those years during the 80s and early 90s did a lot to establish Apple as a brand, and Red Hat is just not in the same position yet, not because of bad technology or a bad business model, but because they do not have enough years under their belt.
"No, I see OSS as having a lot, lot further to go before it's seen as real competition"
Seen by whom? Microsoft certainly invested a lot money fighting off open source, or have you forgotten "Get The Facts" and the Halloween documents, or the attack they made on the OLPC? SCO certainly saw Linux as a threat, as rightly so since Linux has been killing proprietary Unix for over a decade now. Who, exactly, is failing to see OSS as competitive, other than you?