<OT> maybe not good for Virtual Box

[Michael Hipp]

Lonni J Friedman wrote:
>> - Open sourced Java
> 
> Bloatware.

Not sure what you mean. For better or worse the Sun JVM is regarded as the 
standard. And having a full-taco open sourced Java has been on everyone's wish 
list for as long as I can remember. I don't think the quality of Sun's code is 
as important as it representing a necessary step toward making Java the 
commodity it needs to be.

>> - Open sourced Solaris
> 
> Desperation at the loss of market share to Linux.

Of course. But anytime one of the former premiere proprietary Unixes goes open 
source it shows the futility of the whole business plan of selling a closed 
source O/S. It also shows SCO and any others who might follow their path the 
futility of such. In short, like Java, it makes it a commodity.

>> - Supported OpenOffice.org continually
> 
> The consensus is that Sun is holding *back* progress in OOo
> development, not helping it.

That's news to me. It doesn't seem to be very innovative lately. But I doubt 
we'd have OpenOffice at all without Sun and their continued support. And 
without it Linux would look like far less of a viable O/S. Microsoft's biggest 
stranglehold on the market is Office and the proprietary file formats. Sun has 
helped put a dent in those.

I don't think Sun will be terribly missed whatever the terms of their passing. 
But they are not entirely without value either.

Michael