The Gillmor Gang

July 1, 2004
65 minutes, 22.4mb, recorded 2004-07-01


The Gillmor Gang



Jonathan Schwartz



Michael Vizard

Steve Gillmor, contributing editor, eWeek
Doc Searls, senior editor, Linux Journal
Jon Udell, lead analyst, InfoWorld Test Center
Dana Gardner, senior analyst, Yankee Group

Recorded live at JavaOne, this week's program features Sun's new president and COO, Jonathan Schwartz, and guest Gang member, Michael Vizard, editor-in-chief, CRN Magazine. The big news: All of Solaris will be made open source. Jonathan discusses the economics of this move and the corporate-culture shifts required to pull it off. Together with The Gang, he considers what vendor changes are coming in response to open source and Linux. He insists Sun is the low-cost provider because their operating system cost-of-goods are essentially zero.

That is unless IBM buys Novell to acquire SUSE Linux. (Jonathan says Red Hat's too pricey to be acquired.) Did Sun miss owning the Unix-on-Intel market when they nearly killed off Solaris x86 a few years ago?

Some analysts and journalists refer to "the beleaguered Sun Microsostems." Hear Jonathan defend the company against those accusation. He's trying to take a long-term financial view by judging opportunities according (and compensating the sales force) according to the NPV (net present value) of products and services. Will Wall Street, always looking at the next quarter, let him do it?

Jonathan had to leave before the end of the program, so don't miss the last few minutes when The Gang assesses the futures of Sun and its new president.

This free podcast is from our The Gillmor Gang series.