Screw Sun [LWN.net]

Screw Sun

Posted Aug 1, 2003 9:31 UTC (Fri) by fx (guest, #12077)
In reply to: Screw Sun by walterbyrd
Parent article: Sun Sees Road To Prosperity Paved With Its Own Products (TechWeb)

I think SUN has great character. Let's look at some facts:

SUN is a company that wants to "cooperate on standards and compete on implementation". This gives OSS all the breathing room it wants. Even better, it continously expands the ecosystem where OSS lives. Therefor SUN is Linux's natural ally, regardless of how McNealy feels about Linux.
Despite the fact that OSS is indeed eating away some of SUN's business at the low end of the market, SUN has made significant contributions to the OSS community. For example OpenOffice is the leading OSS office suite, opening many doors for Linux on the desktop. They contribute to GNOME and other important projects like Mozilla and Apache.
Today, SUN is a Red Hat and Suse reseller. That's a major leap for a company that swears by the merits of a "vertical stack".
About 10 years ago, when the rest of the world was turning to NT (IBM, HP, SGI and all the others) McNealy put his head on the table and said: "The day SUN does NT you can look for another CEO." The greatest enemy of OSS is also SUN's greatest enemy. All the more reason to be(come) friends.

These are just some examples. The average Linux troll really ought to think twice when he embarks on another SUN bashing session.

About SUN's "financial fundamentals" now. Compared to the grotesque amount of money they made during the dot com era, their profits are now virtually nil indeed. But, their financial fundamentals are sound: they have a positive cash flow, they've downscaled the company to the appropriate levels, they haven't done anything silly like swallowing a company virtually their own size and from the moment the economy bounces back they've got the #1 UNIX product portfolio lined up. The fact of the matter is that SUN's finanicials are infinitely better than, say IBM's situation during the eighties. Even many Linux companies today would love to be in SUN's financial shoes. If they're still around that is (remember the great cash incinerators like VALinux, Eazel, ...).

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Screw Sun

Posted Aug 1, 2003 13:27 UTC (Fri) by walterbyrd (guest, #11620) [Link]

>>I think SUN has great character. Let's look at some facts<<

How about these facts? Sun claims to support OSS while secretly stabing the oss community in the back - and McSquealy gloating about it.

>>their profits are now virtually nil indeed. But, their financial fundamentals are sound<<

Profits? What profits? Looks to me like sunw lost 75 cents a share in the last four quarters. Fundamentals are sound? Here are the facts, read 'em and weap.

---------------------------
For the fiscal year ended 6/30/03, revenues declined 8% to $11.43 billion. Net loss totaled $2.38 billion, up from $587 million.

Earnings (ttm) -$0.75
Profit Margin (ttm) -20.8%
Operating Margin (ttm) -23.8%

http://biz.yahoo.com/p/s/sunw.html
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Screw Sun

Posted Aug 2, 2003 7:53 UTC (Sat) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

You start by indicating you would present facts, but all you do is shout. Unless you bring some real evidence to the table your "stabing in the back" statement has no value.
You don't seem to understand the basics about financials:

Despite the fact that worldwide markets are still bearish, SUN's latest two quarters have been slightly profitable.
90% of the loss during their latest fiscal year is because of loss of value of the companies they acquired.
They've always had a positive cash flow.

Some of the above facts are indicators of bad economic times, non of it indicates a fundamentally bad financial situation. Of course, one has to look beyond the surface to see that.

Screw Sun

Posted Aug 2, 2003 13:23 UTC (Sat) by walterbyrd (guest, #11620) [Link]

The facts of the matter are well established. I certainly provided facts about Sun's financial fundamentals. McNealy certainly did make huge fud donations to scox, and - unlike msft - Sun tried to keep those donations secret for as long as possible. And in return for those FUD donations, SUN got a butt-load of SCO option for $1.83 each - scox's share price now $13.25. Note: getting a boat-load of options in not normal for a legitimate purchase. Also in return for fud donation, sunw linux has been blessed by scox (as if scox has the right to pronounce one version of linux and another version of linux illegal). And listen to McSquealy gloat about it:

<< "Don't touch open source software unless you have a team of intellectual property lawyers prepared to scour every single piece [of the open source code]. We offer indemnification, but many suppliers do not. A lot of companies are going to get very disappointed as we move forward. It will become a very challenging intellectual property issue," he told Sun's Technology Forum in St Andrews, Scotland, this week. >>

hp://www.infoconomy.com/pages/news-and-gossip/group83187.adp

Screw Sun

Posted Aug 2, 2003 18:23 UTC (Sat) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

So, in your view SUN engineered a secret plot to undermine Linux, they did all that using a Linux company (SCO) and McNealy convinced his friend Gates to get involved as well.
In the mean time SUN kept allocating resources to key OSS projects, put some great Linux servers (V60X and V65X) on the market and decided to become a Red Hat and Suse reseller.
LOL

Screw Sun

Posted Aug 2, 2003 18:52 UTC (Sat) by walterbyrd (guest, #11620) [Link]

Apparently you are still in denial. Face it, sunw is in bed with scox, it's a fact. I never said mcnealy convinced gates of anything.

Sunw likes to use oss as a stick to beat msft, sunw doesn't like it when ibm uses oss as a stick to beat sunw. That is why sunw is so on-again-off-again about oss.

sunw claims to be a great oss supporter, but the fact is that sunw is working hand-in-hand with scox. sunw may not have engineered the plot, but sunw was quick to jump in on it. sunw didn't talk to gates, but sunw doesn't mind their business partner -scox- bringing gates aboard. Sunw wants the support of the open source community, but sunw doesn't like competing against enterprise level linux.

Why do you think so many options for scox were transfered to sunw? How do you explain mcnealy's statements about only sunw products being "guarenteed legal" ?

I time to stop being a sunw religious zealot, and time to start looking at the facts:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/cnet/stories/1024633.htm

Screw Sun

Posted Aug 2, 2003 19:58 UTC (Sat) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

So SUN has got SCO options. That's pretty smart thinking from McNealy. Apparently SCO owns a significant amount of UNIX copyrights. SCO can use these rights as a lever to make everybody's life miserable: SUN, IBM, HP, SGI and others all depend on SCO for these licenses. By becoming a (potential) SCO shareholder SCO's relative power over SUN decreases and SUN's power over the others increases. You could describe that as SUN and SCO being in bed. So what? Anything wrong with that? IMHO SUN was probably first to realise SCO was starting to capitalize on it's UNIX copyrights and was the first company to make the right move.
As UNIX is SUN's core business they want to keep as many options open as possible, so when SCO introduced a new UNIX licensing scheme earlier this year, SUN simply paid. Anything wrong with that?
When SCO went after IBM, McNealy obviously had a laugh. He moved quickly to take advantage of the situation by announcing SUN had all the appropriate licenses. That's not very nice, but hey, you don't survive two decades in IT just by being a nice guy.
Try to look at it this way. Right now there are two kinds of companies considering Linux: those who don't care about the SCO mess, and those who do care and might refrain from using Linux because of legal issues (no matter how ridiculous SCO's claims are). For those who don't care, nothing changes. Those who do have some concerns can now buy Linux systems from SUN and they don't need to worry about anything. So, looking at it this way, SUN is actually doing the Linux community another favour.
I'm not denying McNealy doesn't like Linux. Apparently the man has a decapitated penguin in his office. On the other hand market forces can't be ignored forever and SUN is slowly moving towards Linux.

fx: look towards the future

Posted Aug 2, 2003 19:15 UTC (Sat) by walterbyrd (guest, #11620) [Link]

64-bit processors from AMD, INTC, and Motorola, have just come out in the last year. Many enterprise level features for linux have also just come out in the last year. These 64-bit processors, and enterprise level features may not have all that dramatic an effect on sunw yet. But what about over the next few years? Fair to say this will eat into sunw's already diminishing market share?

Sunw products, like java and solaris, won't go away any time soon. Sunw may return to true profitability. So, okay, I may have overstated my case when I called sunw another failing unix company. But, is it fair to say that sunw won't see much dynamic growth any time soon?

Sun makes some good stuff, but so did DEC, so does SGI. Making good stuff is not enough to insure a good future.

Also, McNealy is a disgrace. In his desperation he is forging alliances with the scum of the IT world (scox). He is talking out of both sides of his mouth about oss. And he is making under-handed, often personal, attacks about his competition - boasting the he completed harvard while gate and ballmer dropped out (who cares?). I think sunw's hp-away away campain may have back-fired: hp issued a news release slamming sunw for their attacks. Sunw's "blue-away" campaign may back-fire also.

I don't know how much it affects sunw's future, but let's face it: mcnealy is a smarmy ass. Everything he says seems to be an arrogant, smug, mannar. He is constantly gloating and insulting, and generally just making an ass of himself.

fx: look towards the future

Posted Aug 2, 2003 20:31 UTC (Sat) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

There is still a very big gap between SUN material and anything available on Intel/AMD. It's not just the CPU, it's the entire design of the machine (RAS features for example). Of course it's not Linux's fault Intel based equipment generally sucks.
I think SUN's HP-away campaign is 100% on target. Alpha/Tru64 customers are confronted with a dead-end platform and all HP can suggest is a migration to PA-RISC, which is a dead-end as well, or a migration to Itanium which is an immature platform and another potential trainwreck. Compare that to Sparc/Solaris with over a decade of backward compatibility and a nice long roadmap into the future.
Yes, McNealy is arrogant.

fx: look towards the future

Posted Aug 3, 2003 7:13 UTC (Sun) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

Where do you see a diminishing SUN market share BTW ? Over the last couple of years SUN has done nothing but eating away market share from it's competitors.

fx: look towards the future

Posted Aug 3, 2003 14:38 UTC (Sun) by walterbyrd (guest, #11620) [Link]

From what I can see, sunw is barely holding it's own against HP and IBM. There is this article from a few days back:

http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BCAD48FC8-1EBF-4496-AC0F-4FB0FC869E24%7D&siteid=google&dist=google

But, I was really discussing the threat from Linux, FreeBSD, and even MS-Windows. All of those OSes are growing, while all the proprietary UNIXes seem to be shinking.

fx: look towards the future

Posted Aug 4, 2003 14:00 UTC (Mon) by fx (guest, #12077) [Link]

SUN is doing quite well compared to HP and IBM. What you're looking at are server sales including Intel equipment. These numbers are not very meaningful. Of course there are a countless number of 1U or 2U low-end systems shipped running NT or Linux, but that's not SUN's real market.
There are numerous other recent articles that'll tell you SUN is holding quit well. What's more important: during the .com boom SUN has taken a very big chunk of the UNIX market away from IBM and HP.