Joel Spolsky doesn't post very frequently, but when he does I always enjoy the clarity and insightfulness his writings brings to a relevant topic. His latest post "Strategy Letter V" is no exception.
In this post Joel debunks many of the myths, oversights and misconceptions of free software economics on the industry by first pointing out how "smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements." He then goes on to demonstrate how commercial technology powerhouses such as IBM and Sun are putting free software to this use.
Boing Boing's Cory Doctrow comments positively, but points out that Spolsky's criticism of Sun's "strange" and seemingly scattershot market approach of supporting write-once-run-anywhere software (Java) is mistaken. "Sun's unique sales proposition is what it has always been: interoperability," says Doctrow.
I have to agree with Joel somewhat that Sun's rhetoric and actions seems more focused on undermining Micrososft then developing their own business. However Sun has been at that game for years and has continued to be relatively successful in the commercial space by supporting free software and advocating Java. (Whether Sun's success will continue is another issue in light of a tough economic climate and mounting competition from IBM and HP to name a few.)
I think there is something more subtle to Sun's actions then then Joel's assertion that "...Sun is a hardware company. Making hardware a commodity is the last thing they want to do." I do believe that Sun does not want their servers to become a commodity. I also believe that interoperability is certainly one as Cory points out, but what is not been brough up is the timing of Sun's release and support of Java. When you look back, Java came at a time when Microsoft's dominance of all computing systems was almost unchallenged with Intel hardware in toe behind it. Generally speaking, there seemed to be little advantage or momentum for Unix based systems.
Riding the emergence of HTTP, HTML and the browser as a publishing platform, the Java platform changed that (after one false start with applets) by providing a better economic and technological solution for server-based computing solutions in the enterprise. Given Sun's mainstay has been its powerful servers that outperform and provide more reliability than Wintel solutions, shifting the momentum towards the server makes all of the sense in the world.
Now that Java has contributed to this shift that benefited Sun, they cannot simple drop support for Java as it would be irresponsible and bad form. Yes, IBM, HP, and Dell amongst other hardware vendors can run Java applications on its servers, but they where slow to react and now that they have they're playing in Sun court and not down the street. I presume that Sun was betting that they can engineer better hardware and provide better service to its customers with better economic opportunities for system integrator and resellers then those companies. It was and continues to be a risky game, but in my experience Sun has succeeded and is poised to continue to do so with IBM and HP continuing with their plan to grow larger and more lethargic as one-stop-shopping megavendors.
