If you visit Amazon.com and look up "1984", you'll see a review which begins with the following words:
Airstrip One is part of the vast political entity Oceania, which is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the constant "correction" of such records. "'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"
I was reminded of this when I saw the photographs of Scott McNealy and Steve Ballmer, laughing and shaking hands last Friday. I've worked at Sun for nearly 19 years, and during that time Microsoft has always been the "Eastasia" with which our "Oceania" was at war. It was particularly awkward for me in the early years, because I worked on PC-NFS®, a software product that enabled DOS and Windows PCs to use Sun's NFS [network file system] to share files. This obviously involved down'n'dirty systems programming hackery of Microsoft's operating systems. I can still remember my first visit to meet the SunOS (Unix) group in California back in November, 1985, and their reaction when I told them that the NFS and UDP/IP software in PC-NFS was written as a 64KB device driver in x86 assembly language. And in the spirit of "using what you write", I was always a PC user, attacting odd looks from colleagues with their Sun workstations. (I'm still an odd-ball, with my Mac PowerBook rather than a SunRay.)
Initially I think the competition with Microsoft was healthy for Sun - it certainly helped us punch above our weight in the marketing game. However, over the years the rivalry intensified and by the late 1990s it got w-a-a-y too heated for anyone's good. It all culminated in various nasty lawsuits over Microsoft's forking of Java and other monopolistic practices. My view was that the suits were thoroughly justified from a legal standpoint, but that it wasn't clear that they were helping us in our primary rôle as a commercial enterprise. It probably distracted our customers, and I know that it distracted us. I'm sure that psychologists have a term (and a DSM IV category) for people who define themselves by what they are against rather than what they are for, by who they are not rather than who they are. Anyway, it became an institutionalized thing, much like the Red Sox and the Yankees, or Glasgow Celtics and Glasgow Rangers.
But now the Ministry of Truth has spoken. We have always been at war with Eurasia, and Eastasia is our ally. It's going to take some getting used to.....
Posted by geoff2 at April 4, 2004 02:39 PMI can't imagine being allies with microsloth, to me MS is the enemy of the Mac. I even consider os in dating criteria ;) Sun, Mac, basically anything but Dos and windows.
I haven't liked MS on principle since the burying of MacBasic (http://tinyurl.com/ypvl3). Donn Denman, the developer, had been my chem lab partner in college and I had played with MacBasic. He did a great job. I really think not having a decent Basic at the time hurt Mac sales tremendously.
Its bad enough Gates owns $150 million of Apple stock but in Dec. I actually had to spec out and buy a laptop running windows XP the other month for a client. I hated it, but it was a replacement for one stolen so...
Posted by: Susan in St. Paul at April 5, 2004 12:22 AMAndy Orlowski's comments in The Register, here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/36777.html seem pretty cogent.
On the other hand, Ashlee Vance's piece about Rich Green - http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/36780.html - seems off base. My guess is that he wanted to move on, but was stuck because of the lawsuits. (Hard to focus on something new when you have to keep coming back to give testimony at your old company.)
Posted by: Geoff at April 5, 2004 12:42 AMIt will be interesting to see what happens. Its always easier to unite against a common enemy.
Posted by: Susan in St. Paul at April 5, 2004 01:13 AMDon't get me wrong. I actually think that this is a necessary shift for Sun; it will just be difficult to wrap our heads around. I've never been in a major takeover/merger situation, but I imagine it's a bit like being a DEC employee being absorbed by Compaq and then by HP. A fierce competitor suddenly becomes one of "us"..... It must feel strange.
Posted by: Geoff Arnold at April 5, 2004 02:49 PM"I'm sure that psychologists have a term (and a DSM IV category) for people who define themselves by what they are against rather than what they are for, by who they are not rather than who they are."
The term is "Canadian".