Comments on: Sun restructures, lays off up to 6,000

Company will realign its software organization into new business groups with a focus on open source and new market sectors.

[Manhattan2]

That is unfortunate. Sun is a company that has loads of potential energy. If Sun wants to get on the right track email us at Sensible Ventures. We think we can help in some directions that Sun should be pointing in! Don't get lost in the clouds. The cloud is the easy part. What you need is the data flow and the bolts of enlightenment that come to and from the rest of us.

[Len Bullard]

This will be a test of the open source model worth watching. To wit, is open source as a business model in conflict with open source as a development model? Depending on the balance there, Sun may be laying off good people while making policy of the very wound from which they are bleeding.

The idea that open source creates markets into which one sells while simultaneously lifting all other boats can also be explained that open source drains the ocean and the only profits to be made are from manually retrieving boats stuck in the mud.

Let's watch.

[Commander_Spock]

The headline of this article reads: "Sun restructures, lays off up to 6,000" It this the results of an Open Source Business Model for products like "Open Office, Open Solaris..." or what? Long Live OS/2 and Lotus SmartSuite! Now, on to an economic recovery in the U. S. Economy President-Elect Obama!

[Commander_Spock]

Correction: "Are these the results Open Source Business Models" instead of "It this the results of an Open Source Business Model ". Thanks.

[Commander_Spock]

We will be hiring - OS/2 and IBM's Lotus Symphony Skills Required!

[Nael]

Split the company in to four autonomous companies.

a) Software (OpenSource all product lines)
b) Hardware (Servers/Workstations)
c) Services (Consulting services)
d) Data Storage (SAN/NAS)


And going private is great idea.

[globalist_agenda]

Why does Sun still exist? It seems like most of their software products are free. Hardware has been commoditized. High-performance workstations and servers for dirt cheap. What's their business model? If they were a startup, what would their pitch to VCs be?

[Znatok]

SUN is a dinosaur that I really wish to stay for years simply because it unique.
They just another example of Apple in 1995. Lotsa tech, pure marketing, blind management. They need they own SJ.

[jinx101a]

I guess this was bound to happen since they don't make anything or very little off of their products. Crappy business model and these latest 6,000 employees are the sacrificial lambs.

My only question is will Java in it's current incarnation suffer and/or survive with Sun?

[idfubar]

A Sun-less world is not the utopia of free market capitalism that the posters have suggested - I'm hoping the good guys win.

[aeshraghi]

I had a chance to attend a one-day summit at Sun recently and take a quick tour as well. They have some technologies that can relate very well to millions of businesses (and not just Fortune 500 or 1000 that Sun is mostly do business with). It seems to me that Sun has realized this fact and tries to reach SMB ($1B acquisition of MySQL is a good example of that). Said that technology is something and culture of the company is something else. Culture and technology have to be in harmony and I understand the culture has changed over there at some degree yet Sun - like any other established business - has its DNA.

Perhaps if Sun could start another company - 100% independent - but customizing, packaging and selling Sun's technologies for SMB, it could work out very well otherwise it is more likely for Sun to become a more and more confused and confusing company year after year.