Jonathan sent a email to the company, the WSJ has reposted it here: Sun’s Schwartz Tries to Reassure His Troops in Email.
The following amazes me…
We’ve never walked away from the wholesale reinvention of business models, the redefinition of technology boundaries or the pursuit of new routes to market.
Apparently there is no time like the present in which to start. Going on…
We’ve never walked away from a challenge – or an opportunity.
um…. what?
I do not consider the announcement to be the end of the road, not by any stretch of the imagination. I believe this is the first step down a different path, one that takes us and our innovations to an even broader market, one that ensures the ubiquitous role we play in the world around us.
Did I miss something? I know I’ve been drinking Jonathan’s kool-aid a long time, but if Sun ceases being Sun and become a part of Oracle, isn’t that the end of the road? Sun badge replaced with Oracle badge… I think thats sorta the end.
Thank you for everything you’ve done over the years, and for everything you will do in the future to carry the business forward.
Ya, to carry their business forward. What the hell?
Lets please separate things a bit. Solaris, Java, MySQL, SPARC, etc, will go on…. Sun will not. His email sort of glosses over that fact with the same old crufty flowery “we rule” statements… except that “we” don’t exist anymore, or at least we won’t in a couple months.
I think the Oracle deal may very well be transformational for Solaris, Java and SPARC, but Sun Microsystems is something very near and dear to many of us… and now its done. I realize he was trying to avoid a “sorry, we tried, it was time to throw in the towel” mail, but wow… our great and mighty leader is himself in denial. Sad.
In a cloud of sadness and bewilderment, I find comfort in Ecclesiastes, the wisdom of Solomon, approx 3,000 years ago he had the right words:
3:1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; 3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.
Good on you for having the balls to tell it like it is, Ben. I’ve been drinking the Kool Aid as well – but if this isn’t purely duplicitous corporate double-speak, I really don’t know what is. Shame on him, and shame on Sun’s management.
In a cloud of sadness and bewilderment, I find comfort in quoting Hudson from Aliens:
“Now what the fuck are we supposed to do? It’s game over, man, GAME OVER!!”
Indeed im just glad it wasnt IBM. IBM support in NZ Sucks. I hope they can fix suns inability to sell to everyone. SUN is slower in sales than any other hardware vendor. Even cisco has places home users can buy from.
Sun has shot its self in the head the moment they made non english country make decisions about partners in english speaking countries. I would love to see the outcome from this deal with Solaris having inbuilt database improvements in things like logging perhaps… so many possibilities…
Indeed the culture we have at Sun creates the products. Reading the forums, everybody “fears” that Oracle will kill this or that, and many post nasty comments indicating how little they understand of the industry and Sun’s products as a whole.
I don’t even need to go on – those who know, understands what I’m getting at. Sun is (was?) the biggest contributer to open source software, bar none. Now Oracle will impose its culture of management driven product design and development.
That, more than anything else, will strangle innovation and eventually kill of the competition.
There are ways in which Oracle can make this deal a good deal, but I am convinced that when the board unanimously and elatedly accepted the Oracle offer, Sun employees, the Sun culture, and even the IT industry as a whole were far from being their prime concern.
Sun has experienced hard times post Y2k, but their employees remained loyal despite less than inspiring salary increases and benefits.
It is time for Sun to be loyal to its employees and to its culture.
I really ask myself about the 4 videos onhis blog. Why do they even exist? Why does he take time to make them? Any ideas? I’m clueless. Anyway, I’m wondering in the next release, what will be the output of uname -s? OOS, OracleOS, WeHaveSunOS?
I don’t work for Sun. I never have (and now never will) but I’ve been an avid Sun hardware fan (and a bit of a Solaris fan) for quite a while, and even *I* have been drinking Schwartz-ade for a while.
Thanks for your commentary and for seeking solace in the wisdom of the Holy Bible, Ben. I certainly hope this isn’t the end of the road for you, your rants and your passions. I’ve enjoyed them for quite a while.
I want OpenSolaris & MySQL Cluster to go on — which it WILL!
It’s really sad that Sun didn’t take themselves private, eliminating a bunch of government regulations and overhead, then do the hard thing by really rationalizing the organization — drop some products that should be dropped, eliminate a bunch of management, create a high end sales force and a commodity sales force, making each stand on their own.
Ben you said:
“if Sun ceases being Sun and become a part of Oracle, isn’t that the end of the road? Sun badge replaced with Oracle badge… I think thats sorta the end.”
and
“Ya, to carry their business forward.”
Well, it comes down to what Sun is. I think it is the technology, the employees and the customers and that is what *I* would care about, not necessarily the legal entity.
Sun has been shedding employees by the thousand and more was on the way with no stability in sight.
I am an employee of Sun and am very passionate about the technology. If the technology can find a new home then I am happy. If some of the employees can find a home and stability with Oracle, so be it. I’d rather it be this way than carry on with no end in sight.
I don’t see why Oracle would buy Sun and rip it into pieces. Well, it could and only time will tell what’ll happen. But I am hopeful.
It seems to me that Sun is shutting down when their just on the verge of seeing the fruits of their labor come to fruition.
Truly sad.
On the other hand since Oracle competes in more markets maybe Oracle will be able to gain the needed market share that Sun could not.
alan
(2006-2009) Sun Microsystems: The future was Schwarz (Black)
(2009 – onwards) openaparc, opensolaris, openoffice, openetc, 8 billion dollars and the amazingly talented engineers from sun – a bright horizon ahead.
“Sun has been shedding employees by the thousand and more was on the way with no stability in sight.
I am an employee of Sun and am very passionate about the technology. If the technology can find a new home then I am happy. If some of the employees can find a home and stability with Oracle, so be it. I’d rather it be this way than carry on with no end in sight.”
That’s a good way of looking at it. The layoffs were depressing, and it didn’t seem to ever end. I was worried they would run out of people to lay off and start handing the squirrels on campus pink slips, just out of habit.
This whole Oracle acquisition is a failure on Sun and its management. I will say it again, Sun management failed to deliver. Constant advertisements about how good of a position Sun is in and its innovative products and now the acquisition is proof that they were all full of shit.
But the sad truth is, Sun did have good products. So the failure rests fully on Jonathan and the EMG (executives) for not making that into revenue.
Why the heck did we buy MySQL for 1 billion, just to give it to Oracle? I don’t get that one. With OpenStorage/ZFS and Mysql, I always thought they would be a good competitor to Oracle in the long run.
We all know that with the advent of cloud computing, people will need bigger servers – something we were always good at, and where the money is. Like the previous poster, from my limited financial view, I thought Sun was just around the corner of reaping the fruits from its effort. Super scalable storage, popular database …
I hope Oracle can make better use of these products. The Sun management just got their $$ and ending a historic company.
Does anyone know if Sun was running short on money, thats why they had to resort to this?
OR was it because they saw a good opportunity (the same management that couldn’t get Sun out of the red tape even with good products, now think this was a good opportunity with Oracle?) and went for it?
“I am an employee of Sun and am very passionate about the technology. If the technology can find a new home then I am happy. If some of the employees can find a home and stability with Oracle, so be it. I’d rather it be this way than carry on with no end in sight.”
Yeah, great. This way, most of us still get laid off, but the people who led us into this mess still get seats on the board and/or huge payoffs. Much better than all of us getting laid off, but going down fighting… not.
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