Silicon Valley Needs Sun

Campbell, Calif. -

Here's to you, Scott.

Scott McNealy is no longer the chief executive of Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ). That should please Wall Street, which has long been unhappy with Sun's performance. But perhaps they are overlooking something that's not measured by the company's stock: Sun, with Scott at the helm, has made a huge impact on Silicon Valley that should not be forgotten.

I'm the CEO of BitMover, but started out as a systems programmer back in the day. When I finished school, the only place anyone wanted to work was Sun. I would have crawled over broken glass to work there, especially in the kernel group. Before Sun, there was Bell Labs: Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan and others gave us Unix, but Bill Joy and Sun gave us the next generation of Unix. I wanted to be a part of that, and after begging for a while, Sun gave me the chance--in the kernel group. I jumped at that chance and ended up spending seven years at Sun.

I experienced firsthand the education that Sun gave a young, green engineer. Sun was the industry version of a postdoctoral degree: It was where you went to get educated for the real world. The valley is full of Sun alumni who have gone on to lead other companies, and they may not have made it there without the Sun experience. Edward Zander is leading Motorola (nyse: MOT - news - people ); Steve Kleiman is chief technology officer at Netapp; John Entenmann, now executive vice president at Informatica (nasdaq: INFA - news - people ), was first a vice president at Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL - news - people ). I wouldn't be surprised if Sun has produced more technical people who have gone on to lead other companies than any other technical company based in the valley. Nobody gives Sun credit for that and we should--Sun's contribution to this industry is bigger than Sun itself.

It's easy to second-guess where Sun went wrong. A long time ago I suggested that maybe Sun should consider open source, but that was long before open source was in favor. That paper is here.

Sun is trying that route now, but it's hard to say whether trying it back then would have worked. It may seem obvious now, but at the time, the ideas were entirely unproven. Given the experience I've now had as a CEO, I'm not sure I would have done any differently in Scott's shoes.

It's easy to dismiss Sun as a Johnny-come-lately to the open source world, but many people probably don't realize that Sun was an early leader in open source. In 1999, a large percentage of all open source was copyrighted by Sun and given to the open source community. Open source didn't get the same kind of public relations that it does today, so that fact went largely unknown.

I live in fear of no Sun. Silicon Valley needs Sun. It's a problem for Sun that they don't hang onto their best and brightest, but it's a bigger problem for the industry if Sun goes under. Nobody else is providing the education that Sun gives. Nobody. It's not even close.

We all need the kind of people that Sun produces.

I hope that this change is good for Sun. I'm sad to see Scooter go, I really respected his leadership. Many good things happened under his watch. I hope that Sun continues to care about the things they've cared about over the years. Scott and the other Sun people should be enshrined for all the good they've done that goes way beyond the Sun bottom line. They've moved the community forward far more than anyone else. Linux may be today's hot thing, but what they are copying by and large came from Sun.

Sun was the next Bell Labs in terms of systems research and advancement.

That's why I wanted to work there and why I value the years I had there. No other company has stepped into those shoes. While Wall Street cares about the stock price, some of us realize that Sun's value shouldn't be measured using that metric alone. Sun made the world a better place.

I'm proud to have been a part of that, and so are a lot of other people.

Here's to you, Scott. Good job.

Larry McVoy spent seven years at Sun. He is CEO of BitMover, a small, profitable company building developer tools including BitKeeper.