Sun wasn't always the underdog though. At one time, they were trouncing all over IBM, HP, Compaq as far as server sales. They were #1 in the Unix market for a long time and had ample oppurtunity to lock down their products and customers, much like IBM did in the mainframe world. But they didn't. Revenue may be slipping now, but i think Sun has always done the "right thing" with software. Things like NFS, NIS, and java where they open the spec and invite others to contribute and do their own implementations. Then StarOffice that they bought and just decided to give away (in the beginning). Look at the OpenOffice developer list and see how many sun.com addresses are there. Sun is also a major contributor to the Gnome foundation. Think we'll ever see IBM or Microsoft release the source to their flagship OS's?
Make no mistake, Sun is still an 800 lb gorilla, and they watch the bottom line just as much as anyone. But i feel they really believe in open standards and user community contributions. And they have a long history of doing so. More recently the IBMs, HP's and Apple's are opening up more and seeing the benefits, but they certainly don't have a track record that Sun has. My only beef with Sun is their longstanding indifference and reluctant acceptance of linux. ray -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ray DeJean http://www.r-a-y.org Systems Engineer Southeastern Louisiana University IBM Certified Specialist AIX Administration, AIX Support =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, Dustin Puryear wrote: > > opportunity? It's a natural desire. Microsoft too was an underdog, > especially in the mid-90's when NT was relatively new and just beginning to > push into businesses. There was a large user and system administrator > community huddled around Windows since Microsoft was trying to market a > product that would reduce cost, and, so they were told, headaches. Sound > familiar? > > Java is basically open with a few gotchas. So is .NET. They can both get you. > > I think we have had this argument before, but about Apple. My point then as > now is that just because a company is an underdog when it comes to a > particular market or issue doesn't make it benign. >
