Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!fernwood!portal!cup.portal.com!johnm
From: johnm@cup.portal.com (John - Madison)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Sun != Open Archtecture
Message-ID: <36911@cup.portal.com>
Date: 14 Dec 90 09:51:17 GMT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 40

Assertion:  Sun is retreating from the idea of Open Systems.

Consider:
- Sun has decided *not* to provide future versions of SunOS to clone
makers.  They will instead be forced to buy System V from ATT.   This
will allow Sun to produce proprietary systems and claim that the clone
manufacturers are not compatible.

- Sun has been aggressively unbundling software like the C compiler,
OS improvements, and such.  Further, they *prohibit* you from buying
the unbundled Sun products and running them on a clone.  Not supporting
such products is one thing, but a blanket prohibition is clearly aimed
at the clone makers.

- Sun is providing marginal support for SBus card manufacturers.  While
publishing specs and claiming that it is fully open, their technical
support leaves a lot to be desired.  In addition, Sun has recently been
pretty aggressive in competing with third party SBus card manufacturers
and has been developing products to skim the cream by claiming the best
selling cards for themselves.  Most SBus developers are small companies
and need the revenue from high volume cards to plow back into r&d.
Taking this market away from them will insure that no SBus developers
grows to be very large, and may well discourage many third party
developers.  After all, if you had an idea for a card, would you
develop and market it, if you thought that Sun would jump into the
market as soon as you demonstrated the concept?

According to (unnamed for obvious reasons) marketing people at Sun,
they are very concerned about clone makers, both at the low and high
end, and are trying to figure out ways to frustrate them.   Instead of
standard approaches like faster machines, lower prices, and better
support, they are using legal strategies like jerking the vendors
around on licensing.  If you want to learn the novel forms of
competitive advantage that Sun is seeking, talk to Solborne or Auspex.

In conclusion: when Sun was small, they supported open systems since it
was a good tool to compete against larger, closed systems. Now that
they are much larger and more able to set the standards, they have no
more incentive to support truly open systems than any other company.
Open Systems has gone from a strategy to a vapid marketing slogan.