Tuesday December 07 04:30 PM EST
McNealy rings bell for Java
Scot Petersen, ZDNet
NEW YORK -- Scott McNealy needs your money.
Not that his company, Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq:SUNW - news), is broke by any stretch; in fact, the computer and software giant's stock price is at an all-time high, the CEO said Tuesday afternoon at the opening keynote of the Java Business conference here. "But here I am, giving away more free stuff."
McNealy, in an obvious dig at Microsoft Corp. and its high-priced Windows and Office packages, ticked off a laundry list of free products and services Sun now makes available, starting with the Java 2 Standard Edition runtimes and binaries, which will be free as of January, he announced.
McNealy also gave away hundreds of copies of StarOffice 5.1 to keynote attendees, encouraging everyone to put it on as many machines as possible ("And we won't sue you") and reminding listeners that Solaris is free for non-commercial use.
"I should have come out here in a Santa hat," he said. "With all that free stuff, we can't afford Super Bowl ads."
Forget shrink-wrapped software
What isn't free is Sun's array of devices to access the free software and services that are experiencing booming growth around the Net. McNealy briefly demonstrated SunRay machines and the use of JavaCards to authenticate online sessions.
But the issue of money kept creeping into McNealy's talk. In a Q&A session following his keynote, he said that Sun is still seeking the best way to standardize Java -- and keep it free to all. "The only one spending money on Java is us," he said. "We are losing money on Java. Every year we lose even more."
That isn't exactly true. Developers who put Java 2 Enterprise Edition into production software are charged a fee, said George Paolini, Sun's newly named vice president of Java Community Development.
Nevertheless, McNealy's message was clear. Free software and services are ruling the Web now -- not standalone PCs running store-bought shrink-wrapped software.
"I've yet to hear of a new shrink-wrap software startup," he said. "E-trade doesn't sell software, they provide it. E-mail is not software, it's a service, and the service is free. And did I mention that StarOffice is free?"
Those services, he added, are not necessarily for people either.
"We're all too focused and too worried about getting people connected," McNealy said, turning the discussion toward Sun's non-free product line. "The big thing is to get things connected to the Net, anything with a digital or electronic heartbeat. The message is: Don't focus on employees, start thinking about things that are part of the environment. That's going to be a money maker." See this story in context on ZDNet
dailynews.yahoo.com
Michael |
