On Nov 22, 1:45 pm, Joe Data <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Nov 20, 12:16 pm, "andrew.bruce.law" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > > However, check out Simon Phipps on FLOSS Weekly 39 [1] to see what Sun > > *do* think it is. > > I haven't had time to listen to it yet, but the points I've heard in > the past are why giving away open source software is good for Sun: > > - lower barrier to entry to the software: Most commercial software has > that too in a "good enough way" - a 14/30/60 day trial version or a > crippled free version. > > - make money of training, services, maintenance: Pretty much all > commercial software has that revenue stream, too. > > - cross-selling of Sun hardware: Sun hardware revenues have been flat > or falling for many quarters now, the only big change was the > replacement of high-end SPARC servers with T1/T2 multi-core servers. > Sun makes most of its money selling to medium and big enterprises. > But there the operational guys define what kind of hardware and > software they want, and then the procurement guys either pick a vendor > after playing golf on the executive level or beating all vendors up on > price. Neither the operational guys or the procurement guys could care > less if developers feel all warm and fuzzy about Sun.
I think you're right, the major reason (or at least one of them) that Sun gives away software (and this isn't related to it being OSS) is that they realise there are free alternatives out there which are "good enough". Their clients are generally "folks who see tech as a differentiator, not a cost code" (to paraphrase Schwarz) so they're savvy. Because of these free competing alternatives they need to locate the value elsewhere - in the services and hardware platform. But this isn't the same as OSS. I could give away closed source software. Sun are open sourcing *everything* - from the chip designs to the old documentation. Listen to the podcast. It's enlightening. I'd love to know what you think about it. (But watch out, Phipps is really quite cocky - some things at Sun never change) > > > I honestly think things are changing in the > > marketplace. Just look at the rise of cloud computing, IBM trying to > > change the way it works with Jazz (which I know went down badly among > > that audience but try it out and more importantly look at how they're > > running the development) and MSFT slowly getting more and more OSS > > friendly. > > Open source is changing the industry, no doubt about it. But cloud > computing != open source - it's just a more user-friendly way of > selling you software in general. And yes, I've looked at Jazz - looks > awesome. But at least right now IBM thinks they can charge you big > bucks for it; in a couple of years we'll know whether this worked out. > I realise that the two are different, but the point is the software model in general is changing, especially in the enterprise. You're right that my Mum and Dad will want to buy a shrink wrapped product from Amazon to do their photo processing and be happy with it. Elsewhere... I'm not so sure. > > Sun might be ahead of the curve too much and die before > > this all comes to fruition (think "the network is the computer") but > > even if this happens I think history might be kinder on them than Wall > > Street is now... > > I think the root problems with Sun is (and it pains me to say this as > a software company) that they hurt their main revenues source very > badly with Java. Joe can explain that much better than I do > (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html), but essentially > they took away the main incentive for buying Sun servers (running > enterprise applications) by making enterprise applications run on > Windows and Linux. They never really recovered from that. Then they > waste a lot of money on buying companies and screwing up the merger > (StorageTek, that app server company I can't think of right now; the > jury's still out on MySQL). And until recently, some lot of their > core software was so bad nobody wanted to even use it for free (app > server, Netbeans - they have really improved in the last two years). > I don't think Sun always buy a company for their tech. I was there when they bought Netbeans and Forte. Netbeans lived and is still my #1 IDE. Forte (as a product) died horribly/was killed and it seemed Sun never wanted to keep the product from the outset. The guys behind it however are now the ones driving the SOA stuff at sun and writnig the JBI spec (last time I checked anyway - I might be out of date). This stuff takes time. Just look at how long Oracle have taken (are taking) to merge in all their recent aquisitions. The server space has changed as much as the rest of the industry. After dot-bomb, big end servers which had been the bread and butter were not what most folks wanted anymore. Pizza boxes and blades were more their thing, and virtualisation. Sun had to move to these more and more to keep in with the bleeding edge innovators. But don't think they aren't innovating in the low end, commodity space. Anders coming back and driving the chip multi threading stuff is IMHO phenomenal. They've also been banging the green computing drum for years now - well before An Inconvenient Truth. The markets are there and they are selling stuff. They're going through pain, and a lot of it, but when the market changes you have to too. Just look at Microsoft. > Karsten --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
