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Scott McNealy: "We Were the Red Hat of Berkeley Software Before Linus Was Out of Diapers"

"We Love Community Development," He Adds
By Jeremy Geelan
Article Rating:
June 27, 2005 07:30 PM EDT
Reads:
 19,371
From Scott McNealy's interview with the San Francisco Chronicle:

"We believe in community development. I'm going to sound a little Al Gore-ish here. But we invented community development at Sun.


Scott McNealy smiling at the SYS-CON Television camera moments before his JavaOne opening day keynote. (Photo copyright SYS-CON Media)

"Let me justify that because I don't think (Gore) justified his (comments about inventing the Internet). I think I can justify ours. (Former Sun Chief Technologist) Bill Joy, as far as I can tell, kind of pioneered the whole concept of open-source kernels at (Berkeley Software Distribution) and created the licensing mechanism. We brought him into Sun, and we were kind of the Red Hat of Berkeley software before (Linux kernel inventor) Linus (Torvalds) was out of diapers. So we've been doing this forever.

"We've been driving the Unix community forever. The Java community process, over 900 folks, 2.5 billion devices, 700 million cell phones, 700 million PCs, a billion Java cards, 4.5 million developers.

"We love community development. We'll leverage it. We think we can compete quite nicely -- and we have for 24 years in the open-source, open-interface community development world. I don't know anybody else who's done better, created a bigger cash pile.

"We're 16 straight years cash-flow positive from operations by being a community developer. Now, we don't have the Microsoft cash pile, but we've got an interesting one. I'm certainly not ashamed of what we've done over the last 24 years."


Linux Torvalds,
post-diapers

 

Published June 27, 2005 – Reads 19,371
Copyright © 2005 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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More Stories By Jeremy Geelan

Jeremy Geelan is Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events. He is Conference Chair of the all-new International Cloud Computing Expo series, of the International Virtualization Expo series, of AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo series, and of the long-running SOAWorld Conference & Expo series. He's founder of Cloud Computing Journal, Web 2.0 Journal, AJAX & RIA Journal and other leading SYS-CON titles. From 2000-6, as first editorial director and then group publisher of SYS-CON Media, he was responsible for the development of all new titles and i-Technology portals for the firm, and regularly represents SYS-CON at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" on SYS-CON.TV.

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Most Recent Comments
Brent Emery Pieczynski 07/10/06 04:15:00 AM EDT

Was objective evidence found to show Linus did wear diapers during a time of immaturity, also who checked to verify Linus was not wearing diapers? It appears educated guesses were being made about Linus instead of, statements of historic fact.
Brent Emery Pieczynski 07/10/06 04:13:18 AM EDT

Was objective evidence found to show Linus did wear diapers during a time of immaturity, also who checked to verify Linus was not wearing diapers? It appears educated guesses were being made about Linus instead of, statements of historic fact.
Maurice Hilarius 06/28/05 05:23:02 PM EDT

Right, that's why sun dumped BSD in favour of SYS-V
JDJ News Desk 06/27/05 06:53:35 PM EDT

Scott McNealy: "We Were the Red Hat of Berkeley Software Before Linus Was Out of Diapers" "We believe in community development. I'm going to sound a little Al Gore-ish here. But we invented community development at Sun.

"Let me justify that because I don't think (Gore) justified his (comments about inventing the Internet). I think I can justify ours. (Former Sun Chief Technologist) Bill Joy, as far as I can tell, kind of pioneered the whole concept of open-source kernels at (Berkeley Software Distribution) and created the licensing mechanism. We brought him into Sun, and we were kind of the Red Hat of Berkeley software before (Linux kernel inventor) Linus (Torvalds) was out of diapers. So we've been doing this forever.

"We've been driving the Unix community forever. The Java community process, over 900 folks, 2.5 billion devices, 700 million cell phones, 700 million PCs, a billion Java cards, 4.5 million developers.

"We love community development. We'll leverage it. We think we can compete quite nicely -- and we have for 24 years in the open-source, open-interface community development world. I don't know anybody else who's done better, created a bigger cash pile.

"We're 16 straight years cash-flow positive from operations by being a community developer. Now, we don't have the Microsoft cash pile, but we've got an interesting one. I'm certainly not ashamed of what we've done over the last 24 years."