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Thursday, February 13, 2003 |
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It was bad for Icarus, and it has been bad for oh-so-many software companies, as well. Jeff Haynie summarizes a discussion we had the other day on this topic and expounds on it, as well. He does a pretty good job recounting some of the software companies that burned up inside [the] Sun, and I'll just add Lighthouse Designs and DevMan from VNP Software to the list. As this JavaWorld article recounts, Sun was going to take the apps. that Lighthouse had built for NextStep and transform them into Java productivity apps. Similarly, they were going to take DevMan and make it part of their Java development tools platform. I remember thinking that looking to the NextStep community for Java solutions was a great idea, given the similarities between Java and Objective-C.
Well, as with the server-side software covered in Haynie's post, no software assets from those acquisitions seems to have survived within Sun, either. Jonathan Schwartz, former CEO of Lighthouse, is now the EVP leading Sun's Software Group, though. I wonder whether he's ever disappointed looking back on what happened to Lighthouse. Of course, now he has bigger fish to fry. Think not. Do you grok Sun ONE?
Jonathan should consider Haynie's recommendation to drop Sun ONE (at least the app. server) and get behind JBoss. I think it is a darn good idea. Scott McNealy has said that he thinks app. servers should be features of the OS rather than stand-alone products, and I think that shipping JBoss (a fully functional JBoss rather than a limited-use WebLogic) on every Sun box would really make that point much more strongly. |
Last update: 11/2/04; 6:07:43 PM .
