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Interview With Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri May 02, 2008 05:34 PM
from the fireside-chats dept.
from the fireside-chats dept.
Engadget recently grabbed a few minutes with Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz. They were able to get some great information on the JavaFX Mobile platform as well as Java on the iPhone and how the struggle against Microsoft is going with respect to open source.
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Typical Schwartz (Score:4, Funny)
That said, here's a typical question:
"Jonathan, we have videotape of you mooning the CEO of Apple and saying "Not until after hell freezes over you SOB." This seems to indicate some difficulties in getting Java on the iPhone."
"Absolutely not! There aren't any technical challenges to porting Java. We can completely get it done man, just as long as Apple doesn't screw around again. There are no technical problems. Technical issues aren't there. Nope. No way."
The sooner someone smashes that pony-tailed freak in, the better.
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This is Slashdot, not Mensa. BIG difference!
jPhone (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't surprise me when I see Apple-Sun coherence or imitation. Schwartz's roots are in NeXTStep/Cocoa development. I'm actually surprised there isn't more with Schwartz at the helm.
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Sun... (Score:2)
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Re:Sun... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can just picture you running into your local Staples and yelling "Make up your mind! Are you a pen store or a staples store?"
As far as MySQL. It has always been dual licensed and some things were not always available in the community version. The things that were available under the GPL licenses will always be available. From the reports I've read, the things that are closed were in the works before Sun purchased them.
Parent
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As far as MySQL. It has always been dual licensed and some things were not always available in the community version. From the reports I've read, the things that are closed were in the works before Sun purchased them.
I've heard that response many times and I don't understand why people like you think it means anything. When a company is acquired, there are changes. Often huge changes. Changes to bring the company into line with the goals of the parent company.
Schwartz has been regularly quoted [news.com] saying things like "open source [is] a fundamental business-model advantage, and not a cheap complement to throw to the community in order to drive sales of 'the real value.'" Yet this "in the works" business decision from th
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There is nothing stopping someone from developing similar features in MySQL's GPL'd
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http://blogs.sun.com/tpenta/entry/jonathan_on_closed_mysql_extensions [sun.com]
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I happen to like Swartz. I think he inherited some corporate culture relics that he would rather do without.
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Nah, it goes deeper than that. Dealing with Sun as a target platform is frustrating as can be. Are they investing money on SPARC or is it dead?
Nothing from Sun has indicated they are giving up on SPARC. New versions have been coming out with their T1, T2 and Rock is coming next year. From what I understand Sun still makes more money from selling SPARC based machines than they do from their Intel/AMD boxes.
Do we need to verify our app run on Solaris 10 or are they dropping it for Linux?
This I don't get. When did anyone at Sun every imply they were dumping Solaris for Linux? When Sun started selling x86 machines, they also offered Linux on them as well as Windows and Solaris. But nobody is stupid enough to ask if they're
Can Java help Sun's bottom line? (Score:2, Informative)
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So here's a question for the FOSS world (Score:4, Interesting)
I think about this every time I look at the OpenMoko and Qtopia stuff. I don't think that producing hardware designs is a bad thing per se, but I don't understand why there hasn't been more effort at rolling out distro for mobiles hobbyists could install on existing phones they might have lying around.
I understand there are Linux-based phones. But think about where FOSS computing might be if Linux and BSD had to wait for custom-designed hardware, or for a manufacturer to build a PC around that product. There'd have been nowhere near the growth.
There needs to be mobile FOSS for more-or-less commodity hardware if there's really going to be a part for it to play in the growth in the mobile market.
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ripped off Sun, but not that Sun didn't
buy licences from Bell back when they
together wrote Solaris 2 (Solaris 1 was
BSD, you may remember, for which you
still had to buy a Bell 32V license)
--dave
Re:i have a better question (Score:4, Interesting)
If you go to a store and purchase something, you give the cashier the money, but the cashier puts it in their pocket instead of the register, the store owner can't come take what you purchased away from you.
From my limited understanding, I think it wasn't just SYSV licenses Sun purchased. SCO had a good product called UnixWare that had very good driver support in the x86 world. I think I remember reading somewhere that part of Sun's licensing deal with SCO was for drivers, which I would assume were for SCO's UnixWare and not just for Unix SYSV licenses. So what SCO owes Novell for what Sun paid them, may not be the entire amount.
Regardless, I highly doubt Sun wouldn't indemnify the OpenSolaris community. They indemnify customer's they sell RedHat and SuSE to. So to even think they wouldn't indemnify users of their own codebase is just ridiculous.
Parent
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What exactly they were to be the licensing agent for is one of the things that's under question.
If you go to a store and purchase the cash register, and the cashier puts the money in his pocket, that doesn't necessarily mean you get to keep the cash register.
Was "the right to sell transferrable source licenses" one of the things that SCO had the right to sell to Sun?
Well, if SCO has to pay Novell 2 million, then I guess Nov
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Re:As the first SCMAD (in my country?) i just woul (Score:2)
Sure, they are the greastest (commercial) supporters of open source. No denying that.
There's plenty of denying that.
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There's plenty of denying that.
Sure you can deny the sky is blue if you wanted to as well. However an independent study created for the EU [businessreviewonline.com] says otherwise.
The study also backs up Sun Microsystemsâ(TM) claim to be the biggest donator of open source code. The top ten business contributors were as follows:
1 Sun Microsystems 51,372 Person-months 312m euros
2 IBM 14,865 Person-months 90m euros
3 Red Hat 9,748 Person-months 59m euros
4 Silicon Graphics 7,736 Person-months 47m euros
5 SAP 7,493 Person-months 46m euros
6 MySQL 5,747 Person-months 35m euros
7 Netscape 5,249 Person-months 32m euros
8 Ximian 4,985 Person-months 30m euros
9 Realnetworks 4,412 Person-months 27m euros
10 AT&T 4,286 Person-months 26m euros
Also from here [sun.com].
"Did you know that Sun contributes more than $200 million per year of intellectual property to the open source movement, in dozens of open source projects? The companyâ(TM)s historical contribution tops $2 billion. WOW!"
A list of some of the open source projects Sun contributes to [sun.com] can be found on that link.