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Sun Cuts Workforce, and Spins an OpenOffice Riddle

According to The Register, Sun plans on laying off between 15-18% of its workforce (an estimated 5,000-6,000 positions) and restructuring itself into three major divisions, thanks to earlier periods of slowed growth (or losses) and the already bleak economic picture.

Sun's President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz says that this is a "decisive action" in the face of the economy, and that these cuts should facilitate "the delivery of key open source platform innovations," including MySQL. In his corporate blog, however, Schwartz drops a few hints about other projects, such as OpenOffice.

Sun has not yet revealed where these cuts were made, though some restructuring changes have been announced, with the expected management reshuffling -- and the departure of Rich Greene, the head of the Software Group. Certainly some of Sun's hardware and software offerings will take a hit, either ceasing production and development, or forging on with less manpower.

There are the other changes, though. Schwartz mentions that OpenOffice 3 distributed over three million copies -- last week. He states, quite sensibly, that it is likely this userbase (that he estimates to be between 150 million and 200 million) will grow as the economy continues to struggle (though I'd hope it could also be attributed to the realization OpenOffice is a worthy alternative to other office suites).

Here's the rub:

An auction's afoot (no pun intended) to see who we'll be partnering with us to integrate their businesses and brands into our binary product distribution - the possibilities are limitless: people tend to print those documents, fax them, copy them, project them...

All right, fine. I don't like it particularly, but Sun (and other companies who might want to integrate in this manner) are struggling, and the idea of a business is to stay solvent so that it can keep producing widgets (and pay its employees for doing so). I don't particularly like this approach to staying solvent, but I get it conceptually. The small print (and it is in fact very small print on the post) causes more bristling:

...(and I know this annoys my friends in the free software community, but branding allows us to invest more in OO.o community and features, from which everyone benefits).

Truth be told, I think most people in the free software community do see the value in some of these situations. I think most companies get lost on the idea that many use these applications not simply because they're inexpensive -- they are trying to get their jobs done. Having someone else's branding all over a piece of software you need, or (worst of all) a document you are printing or faxing elsewhere might not just be a necessary inconvenience. It can be a dealbreaker.

That type of branding is annoying, period. It also seems unlikely that it will garner significant returns for Sun (or those who pay for inclusion in the binary distributions). Restructuring and re-examining a company's priorities in this economy is wise, but when it's coupled with some of the other proposed actions, it seems much too little, way too late.

• mysql
• OpenOffice
• Solaris
• OpenSolaris
• management changes
• restructure
• Sun Micrososystems

by an anonymous user on Nov. 14, 2008

I would prefer Google without advertising. I think it sucks I have to look at ads in GMail, too. Dam for-profit companies, they're taking over the world.

0 Votes

by Roy Schestowitz on Nov. 14, 2008

Those who care about freedom should adopt OOo and abolish Microvell's go-oo.

0 Votes

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