Sun's Marketing [LWN.net]

Sun's Marketing

Posted Nov 15, 2003 23:23 UTC (Sat) by vblum (guest, #1151)
In reply to: What's wrong with this picture? by BrucePerens
Parent article: Sun's Linux desktop off to flying start (Register)

This confurion is really unfortunate! Sun seems to have a good product, and their marketing
is utterly shooting themselves in the foot! Boom!

This was already apparent when VP Jonathan Schwartz gave his "Linux sucks" interview in
one breath with the introduction of their desktop Linux. Evidently, they don't know what
they're doing.

The real issue seems to be that endorsing anything close to "Linux" is poison for a part of
Sun. They have invested so much into Solaris that going around and telling everyone how
great "Linux" works is probably intolerable for a large part of their organisation. Another
part of Sun knows and accepts that Linux is the future of their marketplace, like it or not.

At this point, the overall impression is that of a clown whose left hand cannot stop what the
right hand does, and the other way round, and the message to the outside world is utterly
incomprehensible. It is really a shame that a collection of probably good products and
certainly great contributions is brought to such a mess just because of politics?

Anyhow, this here sounds just like Microsoft naming their next release "Visual Basic OS" ...

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Sun's Marketing

Posted Nov 16, 2003 9:07 UTC (Sun) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link]

They have invested so much into Solaris that going around and telling everyone how great "Linux" works is probably intolerable for a large part of their organisation. Another part of Sun knows and accepts that Linux is the future of their marketplace, like it or not.

Well yes, but if they really OWN the Solaris and don't license something into the OS, then have the opportunity to turn Solaris in to open source and free operating system. After all, BSD does pretty well next to Linux, and as Solaris is also one of the UNIX types, it can use many of the existing software and could have a pretty good chanse of becoming a sucessful free operating system. This way the previous investments would not be totally wasted. Does anyone have any use for the old MS-DOS or SCO's UNIX??? If we exclude computer-journalists and other hobbyists or historians, who are intereasted in acient software, then probably nobody misses those operating systems too much.

Not to mention the fact, that Sun would be in a very good position for providing development services for the Solaris operating system, as they have a vast inhouse experience at it.