[krallja]

Providing Java for free (no matter whether open or closed-source) was a big strategic blunder for Sun: it commoditized CPU architectures by providing an abstraction layer over them. Write once, run anywhere! The problem was, Intel chips were cheaper. So people just ran their Java workloads on their existing x86 PCs instead of buying expensive Sun hardware. Sun should have never written or released Java: it consumed resources, and hastened their demise.

[chrisseaton]

> it commoditized CPU architectures by providing an abstraction layer over them

I think that was part of the point - let people run their existing applications on Sun hardware. Yes it was more expensive but it was also more capable. Emphasising running on lots of smaller 'commodity' instances wasn't yet the done thing at the time.

[zepto]

You are right that it was the point. It was simply a bad goal. Sun hoped it would allow people to migrate to their hardware, when instead it enabled them to migrate away, or to never have to choose.

[LanceH]

I think it had little to do with that. Every year Sun had bigger and bigger computers like we needed bigger monolithic servers. Run an ISP and need 100,000 user telnet accounts? Bigger computer! Then, seemingly overnight, the problem is solved by buying a hundred blades instead, and paying nothing for except hardware.

Sun was riding high on the dotcom era where every new company ran out and bought an E10000, and maybe one with less specs for a development server. I've heard stories of these being shipped before payment just so they could declare the sales early -- once the bloodbath started, it Sun was left holding the bag.

BSD and Linux on commodity hardware killed everything at Sun and Java really had nothing to do with it.

[zepto]

I think Java had quite a lot to do with making those BSD and Linux boxes run the kind of software people were using for ‘e-commerce’ back then.