Scott McNealy Wayin / Sun – Keynote Speech – POSSCON 2012

• Scott McNealy, Chairman of WayIn – Former Chairman/CEO of Sun Microsystems ( @scottmcnealy - @Wayin )

  Keynote Speech: Who’s Leading Now

  

   

  Scott McNealy co-founded Sun Microsystems, Inc. in 1982, serving as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Sun’s Board of Directors for 22 years. During his tenure at Sun McNealy drove the company’s innovation in open, network computing, and he helped transform Sun from a Silicon Valley start-up to a leading provider of network computing infrastructure with more than 30,000 employees worldwide. In 1986, he took the company public, creating one of the most notable publicly traded technology companies, all while positioning Sun as the model of corporate integrity.

  McNealy’s vision and business acumen have made him one of the most influential and widely quoted leaders in the complex and fast-moving IT industry. He helped to evolve the industry through his vision of network computing with the phrase, “The Network is the Computer.” This vision has guided the direction of technology innovation into the 21st century and is today referred to as “cloud computing”.

  McNealy recently announced his next innovative venture, launching Wayin in October, 2011. Wayin is a unique mobile engagement service connecting users and enterprise partners anywhere, anytime. McNealy serves as the Chairman and lead investor in Wayin, which offers a fun, entertaining way for both users and enterprise partners to post photos, ask questions, play live games, share results, and spark conversation amongst friends, consumers and people worldwide with similar interests.

  McNealy continues to be recognized for his longstanding commitment to education and advocacy for open and competitive business practices. In March 2004, he led Sun to create the Global Education & Learning Community (GELC) to leverage open source to provide affordable lifelong learning for all students, no matter where they live.

  GELC was spun off in 2006 as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit now called Curriki. The organization’s name is a play on the combination of “curriculum” and “wiki”. Curriki is built on the XWiki platform, an open source development platform and “Next Generation Wiki” application developed in Java and released the LGPL open source license.

  Curriki’s mission is to eliminate the Education Divide – the gap between those who have access to high- quality education and those who do not – in the U.S. and worldwide. Its online community of educators, learners and committed education experts works together to create quality materials that benefit teachers, parents and students globally. Currently, the site offers more than 44,000 free curriculum resources, engages more than 214,000 members, and receives over two million unique visits per year from educators and students from every country in the world.

  Accessing the Wayin service through a smart device or online, people can participate and interact with each other as they experience live events, such as sports, television shows, concerts and political debates. Wayin is partnering with leading organizations across multiple sectors, including the Los Angeles Kings, Playboy Enterprises and the Republican National Committee. The Wayin service is available as a free download on iPhone and Android mobile devices, as well as at wayin.com and on Facebook and Twitter.

  As a member of Curriki’s Board of Directors and the visionary behind the idea for Curriki, McNealy will help guide the organization’s goal of making high-quality curricula universally accessible. He is always fighting for openness and choice: “Without choice, you have no innovation. Without innovation, you have nothing.”

  McNealy earned a Bachelors of Arts from Harvard University in 1976 and received a Masters of Business Administration from Stanford University in 1980. He is a former hockey player and is a single- digit handicap golfer. He is married and is the father of four boys.

   

  And now the speech:

  Open Source People – you are a Technology Army!

  Scott lasted 2 days when Oracle bought Sun – he blames it on a “paperwork snafu” … haha

  Who’s Leading Now?

  Scott prefaced this by reminding us that he no longer “has a dog in the fight” – but that some things and ways of thinking die hard for him.

  Top 10 Signs you company should have gone OSS

  1. Chapter 11 is cheaper than switching ERP vendors
  2. Ballmer just joined your BOD
  3. Your CIO and IBM CEO are on a billboard in Times Square
  4. More of you employees attended Oracle Open Word than your all-hands meeting
  5. A SW vendor audit is worse than an IRS audit
  6. SW support pricing growing faster than a Pelosi budget deficit
  7. You actually believe IBM will release DB 3 for the mainframe
  8. Your Oracle rep laughs when you schedule a contract negotiation meeting
  9. Compared to Apple, you now think Microsoft is open
  10. Your ELA cost just surpassed your corporate income tax payments and the Obama vacation budget combined

   

  The reason Sun went to OS, was because they were the underdog – they had to compete with MS, and had to find ways around them.

  Part of what it meant for the industry: Half a billion to a billion dollars in margin per month taken away from MS Office from the downloads of OpenOffice.

  Every company should decide what their OS strategy is – is your corporate legal department letting you come here to an Open Source conference today, or using it in the first place.

  A couple of things about Open Source Software (OSS)

  OSS is safer than proprietary code – everyone can see the code, so the bugs will be figured out by others, for you, before you go to production.

  OSS is higher quality code – the engineers don’t want to be embarrassed. It’s like running around naked or bikini season, everyone can see.

  ZBT Entry – Zero Barrier to Entry

  ZBT Exit – Zero Barrier to Exit too – the cost of exit should be in the purchase price (for proprietary software)

  Java Community Process – Hybrid model = Benevolent Dictator model (or Benevolent Steward) (it works – embrace it)! – Hundreds of competitors developing for you, opened it, and licensed it back to everyone.

  Who is going to lead the OSS movement now?

  The technological, spiritual and financial leader (Sun) of OSS is gone.