Sun and open source: Is McNealy whining too much?

Over at LinuxWorld, Nicholas Petreley acknowledges a complaint from Sun's Scott McNealy that the open source movement may be damaging Sun's ability to market things such as its Sun ONE vision of Web services. But, Petreley adds:

Yes, open source is screwing up conventional software revenue models. However, nobody is holding a gun to McNealy's head to force Sun to stick to conventional revenue models.

He points to IBM as an example of a company that is evolving to survive on open source.

To which Amy Wohl adds:

Sun's revenue model problem isn't Microsoft versus Open Source it's commodity hardware and the disappearance of Operating Systems as an important differentiating issue. IBM figured this out and moved faster (can you believe it?) first to a service-centric model and then to the Linux open source OS; Sun didn't.

Speaking of Sun and Linux, we here at Snide Comments Central were shocked, shocked to read the following in today's New York Times:

Trying to blunt a growing challenge to the low end of its business, Sun Microsystems plans on Monday to introduce its first computers running the Linux operating system.

In fact, Sun has sold Linux boxes since it bought Cobalt Networks in 2000 (for $2 billion, which even back then, might've been enough to capture the attention of the Times, ya think?). What Sun is really doing is introducing a new line of Intel-based Linux servers.

Contact Online Executive Editor Adam Gaffin

Archives