What Sun got wrong

太阳微系统（Sun）错在哪里

We have the whole Oxide team coming to Emeryville this week for our annual OxCon meetup. For a remote company, an in-person meeting is uniquely energizing, and in preparation for that, we made some t-shirts featuring Oxide logos that are an homage to past computer companies. Thanks to our designer extraordinaire, Ben Leonard, all of these homage shirts are amazing — but one of them was simply too hot to leave as a surprise: 本周，整个 Oxide 团队都将来到埃默里维尔（Emeryville）参加我们一年一度的 OxCon 聚会。对于一家远程办公的公司来说，面对面的交流有着独特的激励作用。为了迎接这次聚会，我们制作了一些印有 Oxide 标志的 T 恤，以此向过去的计算机公司致敬。多亏了我们出色的设计师 Ben Leonard，这些致敬款 T 恤每一件都非常棒——但其中一件实在太抢眼了，我们没法把它留作惊喜：

Unsurprisingly, this shirt has stirred up a bunch of nostalgia for Sun. Much of the fondness for Sun has been earned: Oxide’s mission comes directly from Scott McNealy’s epitaph for Sun — and Scott’s reflection that over 28 years he “never had to hide the newspaper in shame from my children” remains words that all companies should live by. 不出所料，这件 T 恤勾起了人们对 Sun（太阳微系统）的无限怀念。人们对 Sun 的喜爱很大程度上是实至名归的：Oxide 的使命直接源于 Scott McNealy 为 Sun 留下的墓志铭——他曾感叹在 28 年的职业生涯中，“从未因为羞愧而需要在孩子面前藏起报纸”，这句话至今仍是所有公司应遵循的准则。

But the nostalgia can also become suffocating — to the point where folks that post-date Sun may reasonably demand to hear what Sun did wrong. And of course, Sun did plenty wrong; while I was never ashamed to work for Sun, I was not infrequently embarrassed by the stuff we screwed up. Every Sun employee will have their own perspective on what Sun got wrong, and I talked about my own view in a Hacker News comment in 2011. I stand by that analysis, but another 15 years on (!), I would probably distill things even further: Sun had become bored with the mechanics of running a business. 但怀旧有时也会令人窒息——以至于那些在 Sun 时代之后才入行的人，有理由要求听听 Sun 到底做错了什么。当然，Sun 确实犯了很多错误；虽然我从未因在 Sun 工作而感到羞耻，但我确实经常为我们搞砸的事情感到尴尬。每一位 Sun 的前员工对 Sun 的失误都有自己的看法，我曾在 2011 年的一条 Hacker News 评论中谈过我的观点。我依然坚持那时的分析，但又过了 15 年（！），我可能会把问题总结得更精炼：Sun 已经对经营企业的具体运作感到厌倦了。

Sun’s disinterest is embodied in an episode from 2005, when a startup that was running its infrastructure on OpenSolaris was looking to buy Sun gear. This is — or should have been — a vindication of Sun making Solaris open source: the startup was growing like a weed, pioneering what we would later call cloud computing. The startup was using Sun’s software, and wanted to buy a ton of Sun hardware; the model worked! Except, it didn’t. The customer could not get Sun to pick up the phone. (And when Sun did pick up the phone, they tried to sell them the wrong product.) Sun 的这种漠不关心在 2005 年的一件事中体现得淋漓尽致：当时一家在 OpenSolaris 上运行基础设施的初创公司想要购买 Sun 的设备。这本应是 Sun 将 Solaris 开源策略的成功证明：那家初创公司发展迅猛，开创了我们后来所说的“云计算”。这家初创公司在使用 Sun 的软件，并希望购买大量的 Sun 硬件；这个模式本该奏效！但事实并非如此。客户根本联系不上 Sun（电话没人接）。（即便 Sun 接了电话，他们推销的也是错误的产品。）

This was in sharp contrast to their experience with Dell: the startup filled out a web form in the middle of the night, and the next morning…​ …​the phone rings, it’s Steve the local Dell account executive, and thus began the process where we all came under the impression that Steve actually worked for us. In less than 2 weeks we had some chances to “pitch” the company to get into a certain pricing tier, had all the servers in the datacenter, and had managed to get it all leased based purely on the company’s financials (no personal guarantees). And honestly, 95% of all of the work was done by Steve. I felt like a Big Company. I felt like Steve worked for me. 这与他们和戴尔（Dell）的合作体验形成了鲜明对比：那家初创公司在半夜填写了一份网页表格，第二天早上……电话响了，是戴尔当地的客户经理 Steve 打来的。于是，我们所有人都产生了一种错觉，觉得 Steve 实际上是在为我们工作。不到两周，我们就获得了向公司“推介”以进入特定定价等级的机会，所有服务器都已进入数据中心，并且完全基于公司的财务状况（无需个人担保）完成了租赁。老实说，95% 的工作都是 Steve 完成的。我感觉自己像是一家大公司，我感觉 Steve 是我的员工。

We know all of this because the startup did Sun the tremendous service of writing it all up in a blog entry, The Sun Doesn’t Shine on Me. I remember (vividly!) where I was when I read that blog entry: we had just started Fishworks, and we were squatting in a corner of some abandoned Sun office space while awaiting a more permanent home in San Francisco. My heart sank as I read it, in part because it represented so much strategic success, and yet was ultimately a story of operational failure. I remember thinking that a company that has become bored with the mechanics of running a business cannot succeed — no matter how successful its strategy might otherwise be. 我们之所以知道这一切，是因为那家初创公司帮了 Sun 一个大忙，把这些经历写成了一篇博客文章《太阳不再照耀我》（The Sun Doesn’t Shine on Me）。我（清晰地！）记得读到那篇博客时我身在何处：我们刚创办 Fishworks，当时正挤在 Sun 某个废弃办公室的角落里，等待着在旧金山寻找更稳定的办公地点。读到那篇文章时，我的心沉了下去，部分原因在于它既代表了巨大的战略成功，最终却又是一个运营失败的故事。我记得当时心想，一家对经营业务的运作感到厌倦的公司是不可能成功的——无论其战略在其他方面多么成功。

Sun continued for a few more years, and we tried like hell to right the ship, but it wasn’t enough; Sun didn’t make it. As for me, after I left Sun, I would join that startup, the one upon whom the Sun did not shine. And what happened to Steve from Dell? It turns out, the startup had the wisdom to hire him too — and years later, he and I started Oxide together. Sun 又坚持了几年，我们拼尽全力试图力挽狂澜，但终究无济于事；Sun 没能挺过去。至于我，在离开 Sun 后，我加入了那家“太阳不再照耀”的初创公司。那么戴尔的 Steve 后来怎么样了？事实证明，那家初创公司很有远见，也聘用了他——多年后，我和他一起创办了 Oxide。

For those outside of Sun, our homage to Sun (and to other defunct computer companies!) may seem purely nostalgic, but to us, it’s something deeper: we admire these companies for the important things that they got right, but we study them to learn what they got wrong. We honor them best by learning from both — to be at once inspired and warned! 对于 Sun 之外的人来说，我们向 Sun（以及其他倒闭的计算机公司！）致敬的行为可能看起来纯粹是怀旧，但对我们而言，这有着更深层的意义：我们钦佩这些公司在重要决策上的正确之处，但我们也研究它们，以吸取它们犯错的教训。通过从这两方面学习，我们才能给予它们最好的纪念——既受到启发，又得到警示！