Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Sun's Competitive Strategy (Was: Re: P1754
Message-ID: <1990Nov21.174938.7861@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <AGLEW.90Nov15214625@lasso.crhc.uiuc.edu> <1990Nov16.225515.494@zoo.toronto.edu> <ROLAND.90Nov19160821@lolly.Stanford.EDU> <6749@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 90 17:49:38 GMT

In article <6749@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) writes:
>I suspect that Sun realizes the only way to insure that it maintains
>its superior manufacturing is to expose itself deliberately to
>competition...

To be plausible, such theories should explain why Sun's earlier products
remain cloaked in secrecy.  Consideration of that suggests that this is
a marketing ploy rather than a grand scheme to flog Sun's own people into
being competitive.  (Either that, or Sun's management is simply irrational,
a definite possibility.)

The most obvious sinister possibility is that this is an attempt to do for
hardware what many people thought the AT&T/Sun alliance was meant to do 
for software:  to give Sun a guaranteed lead on the competition by giving
it control of an "industry standard", so that Sun can change the rules of
the game regularly, forcing everyone else into a constant game of catch-up.
As witness the uproar that followed the AT&T/Sun business, the trick is to
do this without getting the victims upset in advance.  To accomplish that,
you have to give them the illusion that they have a say and some modicum
of control.  One way to do this is to let them spend their time arguing
over "standardizing" the previous generation, making it clear that the
"standard" must not invalidate any of your designs, while you quietly get
the next generation ready.

My prediction:  if/when SPARC (or S-bus) becomes a non-Sun-controlled
standard, Sun will promptly announce SPARC II (S-bus II), with loud claims
that it renders all the old stuff obsolete and is the obvious new standard.

Who, me, cynical? :-)
-- 
"I don't *want* to be normal!"         | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
"Not to worry."                        |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry
