"Sun is a brand, Oracle is your company."

Nice take-away quote.

I wonder how many employees read these sort of corporate broadcast emails all the way through. That being said, it's interesting to hear Jonathan Schwartz hand the torch off so thoroughly.

Jonathan wound up at Sun through an acquisition of Lighthouse Design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_Design. The software from Lighthouse Design turned into a dead end (Java won out over OpenStep). Based on that experience, he has this quote:

"And the most effective mechanism I’ve seen for driving that commitment begins with a simple, but emotionally difficult step.

"Upon change in control, every employee needs to emotionally resign from Sun. Go home, light a candle, and let go of the expectations and assumptions that defined Sun as a workplace. Honor and remember them, but let them go.

"For those that ultimately won’t become a part of Oracle, this will be the first step in a new adventure."

Poignant and disturbing.

A very sad day for Sun. A very sad day for the tech world.

I absolutely agree that is a very sad event in the history of tech world as Sun was instrumental in contributing to the high-tech industry. A highly successful company was brought down to it's knees due to lack of leadership, strategy and direction. The management team is accountable for it's sad demise!

Finally, it's easy for Jonathan to say to his employees to go home and light a candle because even if he is going to be out of work he is gaining $17+ million from this acquisition. One word - Irony!!!

I wish all the best to all the ex-sun employees!

I bet they have plenty of time now that they are unemployed.

Did this make anyone else feel sad?

Damn it is good to be CEO. Drive company into ground, sell it off to someone else, Walk away with millions for your incompetence!

I don't think that can be entirely placed on Jon's shoulders Sun was on its way down before he took the helm. He just never pulled it up from the dive.

He did however, under his watch transition Sun into having an exceptionally integrated software stack, which was something they (and everyone else) where always missing. The latest generation of solaris / netbeans / glassfish / etc. Is by far the best Java development platform I have worked with.

It rivals the integration of Microsoft products. Say what you will about Microsoft's products the integration of their languages IDE's, servers and databases is phenomenal. It is the main advantage of developing on their platform and Sun's newest stack was the only alternative that I have seen that was not a convoluted mess.

It is my sincerest hope that oracle does not screw that one up as after using it, if I where forced to go back to something else, it would be miserable.

Jonathan?

maybe reading the first letter of each paragraph will make you feel better :).

Beat IBM. Indeed. Oracle won't nix MS or Goog, but they can walz over IBM and SAP, if they integrate Sun's assets thoughtfully.

It's the end of an era. I wonder if Sun's culture of making good stuff and being relatively open will survive in any form.

> Go home, light a candle, and let go of the expectations and

> assumptions that defined Sun as a workplace

Sun as a company may be dead, but the ideas and values can live on. It's up to the people in that culture to clarify those and live them. If they manage to do that, than Sun the company was the first era of Sun the culture and the acquisition not the end.

> Sun as a company may be dead, but the ideas and values can live on. It's up to the people in that culture to clarify those and live them ...

(Putting on my remote hypnosis glasses): Repeat after me: "Sun is a brand, Oracle is a company".