Sun CTO to go mano a mano with Bill Gates
A good relationship between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft is undoubtedly a good thing, but comparable to Nixon's re-opening of US diplomatic relations with China?
Hope stays alive as "Sun Microsystems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are poised to flesh out the details of the historic truce they signed earlier this year, ending years of bitter sniping between the two technology giants," reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
Greg Papadopoulos, Sun's chief technology officer, is the man who will go mano a mano with Microsoft chief Bill Gates, "because his boss, Sun Chief Executive Officer Scott McNealy, has publicly ridiculed Gates for years, calling him a convicted monopolist, among other things."
In Silicon Valley, burning bridges means never having to say you're sorry.
Gates and Papadopoulos formed something of a mutual appreciation society back in the 1980s, reports the Chronicle, in full Silicon Valley myth-building mode, when "when Gates gave a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Papadopoulos was then an MIT engineering professor and he had been assigned to welcome Gates." Papadopoulos found Gates "really accessible, sort of down-to-earth."
Links:
Making peace with a rival
Sun Microsystems sends a top man to sit down with Microsoft by Benjamin Pimentel, San Francisco Chronicle, 30 November 2004
What's the story? Doug Millison also edits OnlineJournalist.org, "on a need-to-know basis"
