> On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:42:04 -0300
> Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > In short: if anything saved us from a total Windows monopoly, it was
> > Sun´s software strategy to counter Microsoft and promote open
> > standards, Certainly not Apple, not IBM.
>
> This account strangely elides the open-source movement itself.
>
> Wasn't that in fact "what saved us"? If Sun had had to depend on
> proprietary software developed at home or bought from somebody else
> -- how much of a threat would they have posed?
>
> (Not that they posed much of a threat after all. Microsoft is still
> there polluting the waters, and Sun is a stuffed moose head on
> Oracle's -- Oracle's! -- wall.)
>
> No doubt Sun opportunistically took advantage of the open-source
> movement -- they were, after all, the monopoly-to-be, not the
> actually-existing monopoly. So they were willing to make common
> cause with the open-source brigands, at least until Mordor fell.
>
> Had they succeeded in becoming Mordor themselves, I feel
> pretty sure, based on my dealings with these people, that they
> would have out-Sauron'ed Sauron.
>
> Apple is a parallel case, actually.
I don´t agree, no company has done more for Open Source software than Sun (perhaps only Red Hat comes close). I can´t think of any other firm that actually BOUGHT a firm, and then released its full intellectual property as GPL software, as Sun did with OpenOffice.
They were (still are) a good counterbalance to Microsoft, and I´m more than happy to see Oracle´s Ellison putting more money to continue waging the good fights against the Microsoft juggernaut.
It´d have been a sad ending to see Sun engulfed and devoured by the IBM bureaucracy machine as was once attempted.
But all this is besides the point... we were talking about McNealy´s comments wrt to "America´s love affair with capitalism". I didn´t understand it as sarcasm, I think he meant it.
FC