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[98.210.178.152]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id c9sm37109355pfc.61.2022.01.04.01.28.21 for (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 bits=128/128); Tue, 04 Jan 2022 01:28:22 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <8039e060-3315-5f14-3671-00d3f93e90f9@computer.org> Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2022 01:28:20 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/91.4.1 Content-Language: en-US To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org References: <97f563fa-5a17-424b-acc6-07cf127f496d@localhost> <20220103234411.GA19828@mcvoy.com> From: Rob Gingell In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: [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: , Reply-To: gingell@computer.org Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" 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?