Interview: Sun CEO Scott McNealy Discusses Open Source

Interview: Sun CEO Scott McNealy Discusses Open Source
Robert McMillan, InfoWorld

Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy spoke with IDG News Service
correspondent Robert McMillan about company changes, plans for 2005,
and how open source relates to Solaris and Java. McNealy: "Open
sourcing
Solaris is a big deal. The momentum with Java is a story that people
are now just taking for granted, but it is a stunning achievement.
Imagine that we hadn't done Java 10 years ago; where do you think Sun
would be today? It would be all Windows. We'd be done. If people aren't
writing Java Web services, they're writing to .Net. If they write to
.Net they write to Windows. If they write to Windows, they don't write
to Sun equipment. So people say well how come you didn't monetize Java.
Wait a second, there's $7.4 billion cash in the bank since we launched
Java. Just because we didn't charge for it -- it's like saying, HP
doesn't make much money on printers, they make it all on printer
cartridges. There's different ways to create the market and monetize
it."