[ Thanks to Danijel Orsolic for this
link. ]
“2.) Sun seems to have changed a lot recently, with much
more interest in Free Open Source Software. Can you tell us
something about the changes in philosophy and the business
model?“Absolutely. Sun has gone through a major transition after a
couple of tough years. I’d say that this has given us a deeper
insight into what matters in our market -almost an enlightened
sense of self-interest. Sun, of course, remains a business, but one
that understands that open source is the best model of software
development and that Free software leads to the healthiest software
markets. If you are making and selling software, you can do one of
two things. You can develop it in a closed room and charge people
money to use your software, or you can do it in the open, let
people use the software for free (after all, it costs you nothing
extra once the software is written) and then charge for the things
that you can do that the customer cannot or chooses not do for
themselves. We believe the latter is how the software market of the
future will work. And you have to bear in mind, Sun makes the
infrastructure of the network. Infrastructure tends to be open, and
tends to be used by large organisations who want the competence of
an IT vendor. So we believe that the coming software market, which
will be dominated by Free software, is a good match for our
business…”