NXTcomm: Sun’s McNealy Revisits Familiar Theme of Open Networking

Sun Microsystems Inc. Chairman Scott McNealy again pushed the company’s theme of openness during his speech this morning at NXTcomm.

He noted that Sun has been a pioneer in the open networking movement. The company, he said, has made a commitment to make all of its products available for free on the Internet. In fact, he said, almost 2 million copies of Sun’s Open Office productivity suite are downloaded a week.

“Free is a good business model; just ask Google,” he said. “But my employees won’t work for free, they’re coin-operated.”

Expanding on the idea of openness, McNealy said interoperability is a big deal and it can’t be stopped. And he threw in a zinger about Apple Inc. “Why would you want to run all the applications on the Internet that are Java, when you could change your picture from here to here,” he said, pretending he was turning an iPhone. “I’ve been trying to run over my wife’s iPhone all week.”

“The beauty of open source is you have the planet — all of mankind — helping you,” he added, mentioning that 1,700 companies are helping to make Java better.

During his speech, McNealy also announced version 6.3 of the company’s MySQL Cluster product. This is the first major MySQL announcement targeted specifically at the telecom market for Sun, which completed the acquisition of open source database outfit MySQL AB earlier this year.

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