eWeek: Linux Casts Shadow Over Sun

“Sun’s adventures with Linux say a lot about what’s really
important to the future of operating systems and of IT
infrastructure in general. Technological commoditization is both
desirable and inevitable in high-volume, low-margin markets. The
selection of standard interfaces for commodity products is
ultimately defined by what’s most popular in the field, not by what
a vendor chooses to offer or not offer. What also carries value is
a brand’s power. Sun’s Linux flip-flops have resulted in a brand
that doesn’t yet mean much to Linux customers.

“For example, in March 2002, Stephen DeWitt, vice president and
general manager of content delivery and edge computing for Sun,
said, ‘Our teams are involved in integration rather than
development at the kernel level. But our Linux offering will be
significantly more attractive than Red Hat.’ A year later, John
Loiacono, vice president of Sun’s operating platforms group, told a
different story about what buyers found attractive: ‘Our Sun Linux
distribution is essentially Red Hat Linux with a few minor tweaks.
… But our customers told us they didn’t want a standard
distribution that had some tweaks, so I decided to fix the problem
by simply supporting between two and four standard Linux
distributions, though I have not as yet decided which these will
be…'”

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