Sun Microsystems killed themselves 15+ years agp. The biggest failure - affordable high-end graphics - which they were either incapable of developing, or more probable, which they thought they could continue overpricing. At the time - 24 bit graphics cards with sufficient memory and perfor%mance were priced well over
$500 dollars, with some as high as $2,000. When similarly capable intel based graphics cards could be had for $50 to $250 dollars.
Sun NEVER supported the small guys like me - continual price gouging, with their software at outrageous prices, including their operating systems. I started on SunOs, went with Solaris - but had to go to gnu and other open-sources to get software I could afford to run. Those are NOT 'free' - they require an incredible amount of time to implement, keep updated, and make sure they are properly patched. A lot of intellectual effort and time. Couple that with databases that were (and are) astronomically expensive to purchase and maintain, like Oracle - it was a huge hurdle for getting a broad user base capable of contributing to technology gains and cost reductions.
I like Solaris - it was a rock solid operating system. Easier than IBM's and Silicon Graphics ... by far - extremely stable and FAST. Sad to see them go.
Oracle - i detest their 'software' and culture attitude, which is, if you ain't got 10-20k to put into our product, every year, screw you.
The sale of Sun Microsystems to Oracle guaranteed the demise of Sun.
Sad to see it happen - in the 80's and early 90's they were kickass pioneers.
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