February 19th, 2008
Leave Jonathan Schwartz alone!
Snark alert.
Amanda McPherson, marketing director at the Linux Foundation, has taken apart Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz’ arguments for Open Solaris on her blog.
At his company’s Global Summit, Schwartz defended Sun’s open source strategy and said he will be targeting “Web 2.0″ companies in his marketing efforts.
His pitch was that mySQL, Solaris, and the VirtualBox virtualization system make for a pretty compelling package.
McPherson calls that the bunk. “Hey Jonathan: The L in LAMP is Literal,” is her headline.
On the merits she may be right. As I say here, your mileage may vary. I see Schwartz pitching Sun as a unique supplier of parts which glue the worlds of Windows and Linux, closed and open source, together. The essential intermediary.
For enterprises which must live in a mixed-source world, this may appear attractive. Scaled enterprises aren’t just going to download a LAMP stack and roll with it, Schwartz argues. They’re going to need help, especially when it comes time to build enterprise applications mixing Linux and Windows data formats.
But there’s this other, snarkier bit, which I hint at through that picture of Chris Crocker at the top of the page.
It’s better to pick on someone when they’re up than when they’re down. Facing a dragon is always more heroic than kicking a dog.
Sun has been down so long it looks like up. The company has completely reconfigured itself, as an open source advocate, in order to stay relevant.
So give Jonathan his props. He’s trying to do the right thing, while also delivering for his employees and shareholders.
If that means letting him get in some digs at Linux, maybe we should turn the other cheek. I know Linus Torvalds has issues with Sun, but the company has changed. It’s trying hard to become Anne Hathaway. Maybe it’s just gotten to Lindsay Lohan.
For now, leave Jonathan Schwartz alone.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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