Jonathan Schwartz

> What was in it for Sun to invest in GNUStep? I'm saying that Sun needed an update to the old CDE and invested quite heavily in the development of Gnome to create their Java Desktop System [1] I believe it was a mistake for many reasons, nobody like JDS, the name itself was a lie and ultimately they just helped their competitor RedHat by turning GNOME into a serious project. I believe Sun still had all the Lighthouse Design softwares that were made for NeXTSTEP [2] Jonathan Schwartz founded Lighthouse and actually joined Sun through the acquisition (!) Anyway at that time the relationship between Sun & Apple had turned very bad & Steve Jobs threatened them when he saw the Looking Glass demo [2] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Desktop_System [2] https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-g…

Also worth reading again is former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz's anecdotes on Apple, Microsoft and Kodak trying to shake down Sun using patents: https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-g…

Steve Jobs even felt threatened enough by looking glass to call Jonathan Schwartz (Sun's CEO) and tried to intimidate him: https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-g…

there is a great article by Jonathan Schwartz - ex CEO of sun about Looking Glas, that Steve Jobs threatened to sue him over this. https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-g… Steve didn't, but Jonathan killed the project non the less, because he listend to consultants instead of listenting to devs.

"Although we ended up abandoning Looking Glass, Steve’s threat didn’t figure into our decision (the last thing enterprises wanted was a new desktop – in hindsight, exactly the wrong audience to poll (we should’ve been asking developers, not CIO’s)" -- linked from the wikipedia article https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-g… I'm guessing it didn't help though.

Yes and no. Your post makes it seem like this is the first time anyone has heard of Steve Jobs threatening to sue. Apple sued Microsoft over Windows, then got Microsoft to invest and commit Office to Macintosh for 5 years + $150 million to settle litigation between the two companies. Jobs threatened to sue former CEO of Sun over a prototype desktop environment[1] [1] http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-gr… This is unfortunately a side effect of living in a world where software and software ideas can be patented. It is a shame that Steve Jobs resorted to this kind of bullying to get what he wanted though. Seems very childish but pretty in-step with how he was portrayed in his biography.

Relevant: http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-gr… EDIT: I should clarify it's relevant because of the Kodak case at the bottom. Kodak got away with suing Sun because it was so "small" in the software industry Sun couldn't use any of its own patents defensively to prevent the suit from going to court. Conversely, Apple and Sun never got into a slug-fest because each side infringed on so many of the other's patents that neither side could get an advantage. To get back to my original point, getting a patent will make you an acquisition target. Not because you can sue Apple when it copies you. But because Apple has the pockets to sue Google when it copies you.

Nice read from an insider of the patent wars (Jonathan Shwartz, former Sun CEO): http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-gr… He describes why the (software) patents are really needed today. In short: to defend the company against patent lawsuits.

Jonathan Schwartz had a great article about patents and IP where he relayed some stories about the stand offs between companies with regards to patents. Seems very relevant here: http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-gr…

Actually, Schwartz has a new tell-all blog: http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/

You can find out the reason why OpenOffice does not work really well from Sun CEO - http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-gr…

It's really a giant game of Chess, here. Apple can't possibly expect to win this lawsuit. Jonathan Swartz, former CEO of Sun, had an excellent blog post on the subject: http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-gr…

No new information in this article. Its just a rehashing of Jonathan Schwartz's blog entry: http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-gr…

Speaking of licensing and Jobs's quick decision-making, the following is what you don't usually hear from Jobs's inner circle: (https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-g… "I feel for Google – Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too. In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass*, Steve called my office to let me know the graphical effects were 'stepping all over Apple’s IP'. (IP = Intellectual Property = patents, trademarks and copyrights.) If we moved forward to commercialize it, 'I’ll just sue you.' My response was simple. 'Steve, I was just watching your last presentation, and Keynote looks identical to Concurrence – do you own that IP?' Concurrence was a presentation product built by Lighthouse Design, a company I’d help to found and which Sun acquired in 1996. Lighthouse built applications for NeXTSTEP, the Unix based operating system whose core would become the foundation for all Mac products after Apple acquired NeXT in 1996. Steve had used Concurrence for years, and as Apple built their own presentation tool, it was obvious where they’d found inspiration. 'And last I checked, MacOS is now built on Unix. I think Sun has a few OS patents, too.' Steve was silent. And that was the last I heard on the topic..." so this is one example in which Jobs's poor decision making didn't pan out as he had hoped.

It basically was Sun's way to make budget. I would hope Oracle just does away with it. https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/will-the-java-platf… We signed a contract through which we’d make their toolbar optionally available to our audience via the Java update mechanism. They paid us a much appreciated fee, which increased dramatically when we renegotiated the contract a year later. Distribution was becoming quite valuable to us and to them – and given the “take” rates, or the rates at which consumers were choosing to install new content, the Java audience saw value in the new application. The year following, the revenue increased dramatically again – when an aspiring search company (again, you can figure out who) outbid our first partner to place their toolbar in front of Java users (this time, limited to the US only). Toolbars, it turns out, are a significant driver of search traffic – and the billions of Java runtimes in the market were a clear means of driving value and opportunity. The revenues to Sun were also getting big enough for us to think about building a more formal business around Java’s distribution power – to make it available to the entire Java community, not simply one or two search companies on yearly contracts. And that’s what Project Vector is designed to deliver – Vector is a network service to connect companies of all sizes and types to the roughly one billion Java users all over the world.…

This blog post from the former CEO of Sun is perhaps relevant: In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass, Steve called my office to let me know the graphical effects were “stepping all over Apple’s IP.” If we moved forward to commercialize it, “I’ll just sue you.” My response was simple. “Steve, I was just watching your last presentation, and Keynote looks identical to Concurrence – do you own that IP?” Concurrence was a presentation product built by Lighthouse Design, a company I’d help to found and which Sun acquired in 1996. Lighthouse built applications for NeXTSTEP, the Unix based operating system whose core would become the foundation for all Mac products after Apple acquired NeXT in 1996. Steve had used Concurrence for years, and as Apple built their own presentation tool, it was obvious where they’d found inspiration. “And last I checked, MacOS is now built on Unix. I think Sun has a few OS patents, too.” Steve was silent. And that was the last I heard on the topic. http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-gr…

I think patents are just the "mine's bigger" for corporations. In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass* , Steve called my office to let me know the graphical effects were “stepping all over Apple’s IP.” (IP = Intellectual Property = patents, trademarks and copyrights.) If we moved forward to commercialize it, “I’ll just sue you.” My response was simple. “Steve, I was just watching your last presentation, and Keynote looks identical to Concurrence – do you own that IP?” Concurrence was a presentation product built by Lighthouse Design, a company I’d help to found and which Sun acquired in 1996. Lighthouse built applications for NeXTSTEP, the Unix based operating system whose core would become the foundation for all Mac products after Apple acquired NeXT in 1996. Steve had used Concurrence for years, and as Apple built their own presentation tool, it was obvious where they’d found inspiration. “And last I checked, MacOS is now built on Unix. I think Sun has a few OS patents, too.” Steve was silent. - Jonathan Schwartz (http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-gr…

Leaving aside the question of whether most patents actually document something innovative, if you really think that patents can protect innovation, see the recent post by Jonathan Schwartz: http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-gr… . Also, I'd like to suggest one reason to distinguish software patents from others: they hurt more, and they kill certain types of development. If a mechanical engineer has to license a patent and pay a certain amount per widget, that might cut into their profit margin or raise the cost per widget, but it won't necessarily kill the product (unless the patent owner outright refuses to license). If a software engineer has to license a patent for a FOSS project, even a fraction of a cent per copy would kill the project, because it fundamentally can't work with a FOSS license. Note that I've worked with mechanical engineers who give away their designs under similar terms, at which point they'd face exactly the same issues; however, this represents a far rarer case than in software. That said, I do personally agree that patents in general ought to go away. However, I think that software patents do a lot more damage than some other kinds, and therefore it makes sense to focus on them first; they also represent a newer and more tenuous concept that we can more easily fight.

(2006) if you're making all the effort to dig up old stuff all the time, please put dates on the submissions (and a little search for non-wayback links) Non archive link: https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2006/02/04/the-death-of-the-co…

Jonathan Schwartz, last CEO of Sun Microsystems, in March 2006: "Frankly, it’s been tough to convince the largest enterprises that a public grid represents an attractive future. Just as I’m sure George Westinghouse was confounded by the Chief Electricity Officers of the time that resisted buying power from a grid, rather than building their own internal utilities." https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2006/03/20/the-network-is-the-…

You are the one denying the words of Danese while offering nothing whatsoever to support your claims. Oh really? How about this: Nonetheless she is wrong to characterise the opinion of the Solaris engineering team in the way she does. She is speaking this way because she lost an argument inside Sun, not because her view is representative of the views of Sun or its staff in the way she claims. She, along with many actual engineers, was an advocate of using GPL for OpenSolaris but the need to release rather than wait for one of {GPL v3, Mozilla license revision, encumbrance removal} meant that this was not possible. I am still furious with her for the statement she made at DebConf, which was spiteful and an obstacle to a united FOSS movement. S. (Simon Phipps) From: http://web.archive.org/web/20110605051830/http://www.opensolaris.org/j… If anything comes across as a 'fairy tale', it's the idea that Sun would allow Linux to incorporate Sun's technical advantages at a point where they were losing to Linux in the marketplace. As one of the first contributors to the OpenSolaris project who had many long and heart-felt discussions with various Solaris engineering and executives, I believe your assertions are flat out wrong. Jonathan Schwartz (CEO at the time) was fond of saying "A rising tide lifts all boats" http://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2006/11/13/a-rising-tide-lifts-… Others have…