Sun's future

I like Sun, I like Scott, I like Jonathan... I'm just a liker, not an arguer, I guess. But I see Jonathan's promotion to CEO as good primarily because I think it makes transition to the man who will save Sun easier.

Further, I think people who see Sun as being evil are retarded. Sun's got its flaws, but let's be real: people would love for Microsoft to stop focusing on profit so much and start trying to make developers' lives easier across the board by providing platforms and development products that are portable and free and good. "Sure, Microsoft is evil," they say, but they reserve their true dislike for Sun, who didn't just talk about "developers, developers, developers -- as long as you're in our camp" but put their money behind it. (Hear me, Linux froods?)

Sun's spent a long time being behind the eight-ball. By focusing on research and development - with a view not for only themselves, but for the industry - Sun's not been very profitable, their stock sucks, a lot of business choices they could have made, they haven't made. A lot of those choices ended up setting the bar for others -- a bar that the others have managed to exceed, to Sun's detriment.

As such, Sun's served as the carrot in front of the mules. Bully for them, I say, and I've had enough experience with high-end servers that I have a healthy dollop of respect for Sun's products.

So this transition... I wonder if McNealy's ouster (or, if you like, "transition") might be a great thing for Sun, not just because Schwartz is a VERY positive person with specific ideas, but because Schwartz might be an ideal "middle man" between McNealy and the man who will step in and reform Sun into the industry powerhouse it could have been.