From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=LOTS_OF_MONEY, MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 30367 invoked from network); 4 Jan 2022 15:26:45 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 4 Jan 2022 15:26:45 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id E790E94A74; Wed, 5 Jan 2022 01:26:43 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1F18E93FD1; Wed, 5 Jan 2022 01:26:30 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id AEFF193FD1; Wed, 5 Jan 2022 01:26:28 +1000 (AEST) Received: from freefriends.org (freefriends.org [96.88.95.60]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id CE1EB93FCC for ; Wed, 5 Jan 2022 01:26:27 +1000 (AEST) X-Envelope-From: arnold@skeeve.com Received: from freefriends.org (freefriends.org [96.88.95.60]) by freefriends.org (8.14.7/8.14.7) with ESMTP id 204FQO74028768 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Tue, 4 Jan 2022 08:26:24 -0700 Received: (from arnold@localhost) by freefriends.org (8.14.7/8.14.7/Submit) id 204FQNEb028767; Tue, 4 Jan 2022 08:26:23 -0700 From: arnold@skeeve.com Message-Id: <202201041526.204FQNEb028767@freefriends.org> X-Authentication-Warning: frenzy.freefriends.org: arnold set sender to arnold@skeeve.com using -f Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2022 08:26:23 -0700 To: lm@mcvoy.com, gingell@computer.org References: <20220103234411.GA19828@mcvoy.com> <8039e060-3315-5f14-3671-00d3f93e90f9@computer.org> <20220104151735.GD22599@mcvoy.com> In-Reply-To: <20220104151735.GD22599@mcvoy.com> User-Agent: Heirloom mailx 12.5 7/5/10 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [TUHS] Mythical Distress Sale (was Re: moving directories in svr2) X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" OK, serious question. Why did Sun "sell out" to AT&T if they could have raised capital in the market? Did the executive team just not care about what moving to System V would mean? Or did they not understand it? How desperate were they? And why were they so desparate? Were there other alternatives they could have pursued? I too lived through those times, from the outside, and it was indeed a shocker when they moved from SunOS to Solaris. Thanks, Arnold Larry McVoy wrote: > Rob, you've painted this picture before and it just doesn't match up > at all with what I saw. I was there. Ken Okin paid me for 6 months to > try and convince the execs to not go to SVR4. If it was all sweetness > and light, why did he do that? > > You make it sound like it was a nice friendly deal. It was $200M of > Sun stock at 35% over market rate. Who does that just to be friends? > You say you could have gone to market and gotten that, well, sure, > but not at 35% over market. > > SunOS was winning all the deals, as you point out, Sun was growing > like crazy. I did lots and lots of customer presentations and not once > did I hear "oh, when are you guys going to standardize on System V?" > > Quite the opposite in fact. I was doing a talk at the Moscone center > on the first Sun cluster that I had built, Scott refused to let me ship > it with SunOS, so I was being a good soldier and talking up Solaris. > Over and over and over I was asked why we were forcing people to use > an obviously worse OS and I finally lost it and said "I know, I have > everything working in SunOS but they won't let me ship it." > > I was on tape. Okin listened to the tape and said "get every copy of > those tapes and destroy them". Not exactly the friendly everyone > agreeing picture you paint. Not remotely like that. > > Rob, I lived through that time. One of my close friends, John Pope, > did the bring up. He felt alienated from all the other kernel people > because we all loved SunOS and we hated Solaris, it made zero sense to > go that far backward. And look what it got you. Sun is gone. > > If you could have gone to market and gotten the money, you would > have. Sun was killing it, everyone wanted a Sun over every other > workstation, in the SunOS days, every open source thing just built > on Suns. Everyone else had to twiddle the makefiles and the source. > Your story that people wanted a standard just doesn't hold up when > you were the standard. It also doesn't hold up when every single > customer I talked to (and I talked to them at least twice a month > in formal presentations and frequently more like twice a week, > the sales people loved me) never asked for SVR4. Not once did that > come up. And when SVR4 was being pushed on them, 100% of them > pushed back and wanted SunOS. > > On Tue, Jan 04, 2022 at 01:28:20AM -0800, Rob Gingell wrote: > > On 1/3/2022 6:28 PM, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > > >Of course, that's assuming that Sun could have stayed afloat without > > >that injection of cash from AT&T.... > > > > What causes you to assert that Sun was at risk of not staying afloat? > > > > Sun went from $0/yr to over $1B/yr in revenue between 1982 and 1988, the > > prototype for what people now call "unicorns". > > > > Between 1985 and 1989 Sun grew at a compounded rate of 145% a year, and > > according to Forbes was the fastest growing company in the US in those > > years. > > > > Doesn't sound like a company foundering to me, certainly not in 1987 and > > 1988. Didn't sound like it to AT&T either, who wanted in on the action and > > so bought a bunch of Sun stock on terms very favorable to Sun (and > > financially speaking of benefit to both companies when AT&T divested some > > years later). > > > > The injection of capital was certainly useful to Sun, not because of > > distress or failure, but because it was bursting at the seams from all the > > growth. Sun was going to get that capital without AT&T by going to the > > market anyway, that it was able to do so on more favorable terms with an > > already established partner was literally an example of the rich getting > > richer. The partnership to inject SunOS technologies, do SVR4, harmonize the > > various UNIX flavors had already been committed and launched some months > > before the investment occurred and wasn't contingent upon it. > > > > They're not unrelated of course, the investment occurred in the context of > > the already committed partnership. And if you examine the announced > > expectations of that partnership it included some strong dependencies on Sun > > products and technologies by AT&T in both the near and long term. The > > gestalt of the investment was that it was a consequence of "well, if we're > > already doing all this, then..." > > > > Certainly the later transitions in Sun's products had lots of issues. But > > lessons aren't gained from "well, they meant well, but, poor sods, they were > > barely staying alive" especially when the premise isn't even remotely > > accurate. > > > > It's a much more interesting examination to consider: "they had agency, they > > made choices, the context was , why that and not this, what > > was the alternative, etc." Since we can have the facts, why not premise the > > discussions on those? > > -- > --- > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm