What Sun got wrong

The Oxide team will convene in Emeryville this week for their annual OxCon gathering. As remote businesses find in-person events invigorating, Oxide created t-shirts inspired by past computer companies, with the designer Ben Leonard crafting them. However, one shirt sparked nostalgia for Sun. This sentiment is understandable, as Oxide's mission stems directly from Scott McNealy's Sun epitaph.

The reflection that over 28 years he never had to hide negative news from his children remains a guiding principle for all companies. While nostalgia can be overwhelming, it can also prompt a discussion about what once successful companies got wrong. In Sun's case, the company had become disinterested in the mechanics of running a business by 2005.

An example of this disinterest occurred when a Sun customer, a startup running its infrastructure on OpenSolaris, wanted to purchase hardware. Despite the startup's success, Sun failed to respond promptly, even when the startup tried to buy equipment. This starkly contrasted with the customer's experience with Dell, where they received a call from a local account executive, Steve, within a day, facilitating their purchasing process.

The startup later published a blog entry, "The Sun Doesn't Shine on Me," detailing their experience with Sun's operational failure. This experience prompted the startup to hire Dell's Steve, who later joined Oxide together with the author. For those outside Sun, the company's reverence for its past might seem nostalgic, but it serves a deeper purpose: learning from both the successes and failures of other computer companies to inspire and warn future endeavors.