http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars Basically Sun got together with AT&T in 1987 to create, and it was feared, control, a merged version of BSD and System V.

Yes, and Scott McNealy was not much better than Ellison. Attempts to monopolise the use of Unix just alienated the rest of the industry, meaning that Sun had few friends when the going got tough. I predicted their demise many years ago, and said at the time that they should have merged with someone like Dell while they had the chance - but of course that would only have happened over Scott McNealy's dead body.