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back to article Is Sun taking open source a little too far?

Steve Gillmor, host of the ZDNet podcast called the Gillmor Gang, has managed to secure an exclusive interview with Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems president and chief executive officer. Or so it seems. The interview, which is available at the TechCrunchIT site and in the YouTube video below, outlines yet another open …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Breakout is interesting

    The video was awful and punishing to sit through. Only the comatose or a distracted geek would find it bearable.

    Mr Schwartz's blog has breakout of billings per area. It looks like the software is actually profitable. Also support, also training.

    No mention of pony tails, though (thankfully).

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  2. James
    Gates Horns

    Sun's contribution

    Amusingly, in a geeky sort of way, the URL sun.com/ponytail actually works - and redirects you to www.sun.com/software/opensource/ too.

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  3. Kevin Hutchinson
    Thumb Up

    Remember Parrot, the April Fools joke?

    Parrot (the Perl 6 VM) was first mentioned as an April Fools joke, then became a reality. Maybe the PonyTail is similarly fated? Someone go start the project over at http://code.google.com/p/ponytail/ !

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    does anyone have jonathan's april fools joke video?

    They put the video on youtube on April fools but have since removed it....same humor...i am sure they took it down because jonathan should have been managing the business vs. lunch in palo alto for a joke

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  5. A J Stiles
    Go

    Serious Strategy

    Sun have a serious strategy going with the opening up of OpenOffice.org, Solaris, Java and the acquisition of MySQL -- they are trying to groom serious users to expect to get the Source Code.

    Sun have twigged onto the fact that a lot of people stopped using Windows in the first place because they hated what Microsoft, and Gates and now Ballmer, stood for; but they stayed away because they had the Source Code, and wouldn't dream of going back to a caged system.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Lol?

    Out of curiosity I tried going to

    http://www.sun.com/ponytail

    and it redirects to

    http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/

    instead of giving a 404. Unbelievable!

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  7. Jonathan Schwatrz
    Go

    RE: A J Stiles

    Thanks for your vote of blind obedience in my bold strategy to make no money from software by giving it away for free. Please ignore all those nasty Gartner magic quadrants for RDBMS and BI that never mention any Sun or MySQL products, and so what if they always have Microsoft and Oracle in the upper-right quadrants, who cares about an integrated solution when all I want to talk about is the base database product. And we don't talk to those Oracle guys anyway seeing as they won't give Solaris preference - something to do with shrinking market share, the heretics! Anyway, so what if customers actually prefer to pay for Oracle's or MS' database software rather than take ours for free, I'm sure that will change as the recession bites and they will be forced to use Solaris and MySQL. Oh, hold on a sec, we charge for the version of MySQL with the real tools needed. Maybe I'll have to start giving that away for free too.... You see, my "give software away for free" strategy is really a "generate more hardware and services revenue by giving away software" strategy, and when the recession bites we can expect people to take our free software and buy our expensive SPARC64 and Niagara servers. And if they don't have enough money for the SPARC stuff, then they can buy our x86 servers. Never mind the fact that the other top three vendors all ship much more x86 kit than we do, I'm sure they're just lying about their sales figures because they're jealous of my ponytail. And ignore the fact that we ship four times as many Linux x86 servers as Solaris x86 servers, that's just because our customers are too stupid to take free Solaris, but when The Great Realistaion dawns they will flock to worship at The Altar of Sun! Ha! You may prostrate yourself now.

    The One (I'm the real One, Obama is just copying me),

    Jonathan I Schwartz.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Sun have humor

    That URL is a joke...

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  9. elderlybloke
    Linux

    Jonathon Scwartz and then-Sun have homur

    It is all Greek to me Mr. AC

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