Sun veteran here. There was undoubtedly a "cool" factor to Sun in the 1980s and 1990s which I and a bunch of other people bought into. It had burned off by the mid 2000s though after the dot-com bust and wave after wave of layoffs and canceled projects. Any "cool" was left at that point was only from nostalgia and inertia.
But I guess it depends on what you mean by "respectable" or "decent". It may be helpful to remember that a lot of people hated Sun in the 1980s and 1990s too. DEC (Digital) was a particular rival in those times. Spurred by the successes of NFS and the Sun/AT&T Unix deal, DEC created the OSF to counter Sun. Later on, there was something similar with IBM and Sun over Java. IBM eventually did license Java, but there was a lot of conflict.
I think in both cases the issues were mostly about licensing and business terms. Maybe this was nothing more than corporate rivalry and competition, but it kind of felt more personal than that.
At a Sun reunion a few years ago, Scott McNealy said of Sun, "We kicked butt, had fun, and we didn't cheat." The "kick butt and have fun" had been McNealy's slogan for a long time, but the "didn't cheat" was relatively new. I believe it to be true. I don't think Sun ever defrauded anybody. (It made mistakes, and plenty of them, but didn't defraud anybody.) In a world that has Enron and Theranos and FTX, maybe this is an outlier. But there are probably also many other companies that don't make that news that are making an honest buck and aren't cheating.
Comments
Sun veteran here. There was undoubtedly a "cool" factor to Sun in the 1980s and 1990s which I and a bunch of other people bought into. It had burned off by the mid 2000s though after the dot-com bust and wave after wave of layoffs and canceled projects. Any "cool" was left at that point was only from nostalgia and inertia.
But I guess it depends on what you mean by "respectable" or "decent". It may be helpful to remember that a lot of people hated Sun in the 1980s and 1990s too. DEC (Digital) was a particular rival in those times. Spurred by the successes of NFS and the Sun/AT&T Unix deal, DEC created the OSF to counter Sun. Later on, there was something similar with IBM and Sun over Java. IBM eventually did license Java, but there was a lot of conflict.
I think in both cases the issues were mostly about licensing and business terms. Maybe this was nothing more than corporate rivalry and competition, but it kind of felt more personal than that.
At a Sun reunion a few years ago, Scott McNealy said of Sun, "We kicked butt, had fun, and we didn't cheat." The "kick butt and have fun" had been McNealy's slogan for a long time, but the "didn't cheat" was relatively new. I believe it to be true. I don't think Sun ever defrauded anybody. (It made mistakes, and plenty of them, but didn't defraud anybody.) In a world that has Enron and Theranos and FTX, maybe this is an outlier. But there are probably also many other companies that don't make that news that are making an honest buck and aren't cheating.
This is what makes HN great, thanks for your insight!