I guess it needs clarification that I'm not trying to indicate they relied on proprietary hardware platforms like SPARC or a 1990s big-iron licensing model. These days, it's acknowledged that rent-seeking by a million cuts is the only viable way to make money. Even Microsoft is acknowledging that.

SmartOS may've been indirectly implicated in revenue, but let's be real, illumos and Joyent have always been tied at the hip. Joyent was never going to become a Linux-centric alternative public cloud like AWS, GCloud, etc.

If there had been less ideological fervor and with Samsung's backing, maybe they could've offered more serious competition to the incumbents, but the Solaris style oozes out of Joyent's every pore. It's fundamental to their way of thinking. That purity and commitment is certainly admirable, but it's simply not commercially viable anymore.