[hga]

When I learned about their "no service unless you sign this NDA" policy plus their attempts to blame their customers ("your machine room's environment isn't good enough") for this problem of their own making (see my other comment in this thread: they cut costs by omitting parity/ECC) I knew they were never going to make it in Big Iron. Sun's predecessors had defined an informal SLA or social contract that Sun just didn't recognize or was able to implement.

When I learned that their internal sales force total focus on big contracts made it literally impossible for most startups to buy medium levels of Sun kit (by and large no more than could be put on credit cards (Sun's "VARs" were supposed to handle this business but few did, clearly Joyent found an exception)) and that people were buying less desirable Dell servers simply because Dell would actually sell and deliver them (HP's sales function was also totally screwed up at this time) it became clear that no small company that was going to become big was going to do it on Sun hardware (SPARC or x86).

At that point it became crystal clear Sun was doomed; final straws included Sun cost cutting or otherwise screwing up their servers (details on request, but e.g. Joyent stopped buying Sun hardware while they continue to use Solaris).

If I want to get nasty, I'd have to wonder about how much Sun's recent (post Java 6) stewardship of Java made Oracle want retain Gosling and his peers.