Scooter and the shell shock sham

"Combat stress reaction, in the past commonly known as shell shock or battle fatigue, is a military term used to categorize a range of behaviours resulting from the stress of battle which decrease the combatant's fighting efficiency. The most common symptoms are fatigue, slower reaction times, indecision, disconnection from one's surroundings, and inability to prioritize."

Subject: Thanks for a great 28 years
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010
From: Scott McNealy
To: [all Sun employees]

Gang,

When I interviewed many of you for employment at Sun over the years, one commitment often made was that things will change above, below, and around you faster than any place you have ever been. Looks like this was one area we exceeded plan for 28 years. While it was never the primary vision to be acquired by Oracle, it was always an interesting option. And this huge event is upon us now. Let's all embrace it with all of the enthusiasm and class and talent that we have to offer.

This combination has the potential to put Sun, its people, and its technology at the center of yet another industry and game-changing inflection point. The opportunity is well-documented and articulated by Larry and the Oracle folks. Not much I can add on this score. This is a very powerful merger. And way better than some of the alternatives we were facing.

So what do I say to all of you, now this is happening?

It turns out that one simple message to the large and diverse Sun community is actually quite hard to craft. Even for a big mouth who is always ready with a clever quip. The community includes our resellers and customers, our current and former employees, their friends and families who supported our employees on their mission to change the industry, our investors, our supply and service partners, students and educators, and even our competitors with whom we often collaborated.

But let me try. Though nothing I could write comes close to matching the unbelievably strong and positive emotions I have for you all. See, I never was able to master dispassion. I truly loved starting, running, and living Sun. And the last four years have not been without serious withdrawal. And the EU approval rocked me more than it should have.

So, to be honest, this is not a note this founder wants to write. Sun, in my mind, should have been the great and surviving consolidator. But I love the market economy and capitalism more than I love my company.

And I sure "hope" America regains its love affair with capitalism. And except for the auto industry, financial industry, health care, and some other places (I digress), the invisible hand is doing its thing quite efficiently. So I am more than willing to accept this outcome.

And my hat is off to one of the greatest capitalists I have ever met, Larry Ellison. He will do well with the assets that Sun brings to Oracle.

What we did right and wrong at Sun over the years might make for interesting reading. However, I am not a book writer. I am a husband, father of four, and a builder and leader of people who want to make a difference.

But spare me a bit of nostalgia. Not of the mistakes we made, and lord knows I made a ton. But of the things we did right and well.

First and foremost, Sun innovated like crazy. We took it to the limit (see Eagles). And though we did not monetize our inventions as well as we could have, few companies have the track record in R&D that we had over the last 28 years. This made working at Sun really cool. Thanks to all of you inventors and risk takers who changed how we live.

Sun cared about its customers. Even more than we cared about our own company at times. We looked at our customer's mission as more important than ours. Maybe we should have asked for more revenue in return, but our employees were always ready to help first. I love this about Sun, which I guess makes me a good capitalist, if not a great capitalist.

Sun did not cheat, lie, or break the rule of law or decency. While we enjoyed breaking the rules of conventional wisdom and archaic business practice, and for sure loved to win in the market, we did so with a solid reputation for integrity. Nearly three decades of competing without a notable incident of our folks going off course morally or legally. Not all executives and big companies are bad. Really. There are good companies out there. Special thanks to all of my employees for this. I never had to hide the newspaper in shame from my children.

Sun was a financial success. We paid billions in taxes, salaries, purchases, leases, training, and even lawyers and accountants for devastatingly cumbersome SOX and legal compliance (oops, more classic digression). Long-term and smart investors made billions in SUNW. And our customers generated revenue and savings using our equipment in countless ways. Many employees started families, bought homes, and put them through school while working at Sun. Our revenues over 28 years exceeded $200B. Few companies make it to the F200. We did. Nice.

Sun employees had way more fun than any other company. By far. From our dress code ("You must!") to beer busts to our April Fools' pranks to SunRise to our quiet enjoyment at night of a long, hard, well-done day of work, no company enjoyed "work" more than Sun. Thanks to all of our employees past and present for making Sun such a blast.

I could go on for a long time reminiscing about the good and great stuff we did at Sun, but just allow me one last one. We shared. Not the greatest attribute for a capitalist. But one I could not change and was not willing to change about Sun while I was in charge. We shared in the success of Sun with our resellers. With our employees through stock options, SunShare, beer busts, and the like (for as long as Congress would allow) and through our efforts to keep as many of them on board for as long as possible during the inevitable down cycles. With our partners through the Java Community Process, through our open-source collaborations, and licensing strategies. With our customers through our commitments to low barriers to exit. Sun was never just about us. It was about we. And that may be a bit of the reason we are where we are today.

But I have few regrets (see Sinatra's "My Way") and will always look back at Sun and its gang with only pride. Enormous pride. You are the best this industry ever had, though few outside of Sun recognized it.

And what we are about will live on in Sparc, Solaris, Java, our products, and our spirit. Well past everyone's recollections of what we did together. I will never forget, though.

Oracle is getting a crown jewel of the technology industry. They will do great things with Sun. Do your best to support them, and keep the Sun spirit alive and well in the industry. Our children will be better for it.

Thanks for the off-the-charts support to everyone who ever carried a Sun badge, used our products, or helped our company through the years.

And thanks to my wonderful wife, Susan, who gave this desperado (see Eagles) a chance to choose the Queen of Hearts before it was too late.

Someday, hopefully, you will all get to see or meet her and my other life's works named Maverick, Dakota, Colt, and Scout. If you do, perhaps you will understand why I stepped back from the CEO role four years ago. And why I feel like the luckiest guy in the whole world.

My best to all of you, and remember:

Kick butt and have fun!

Scott

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

time atom

space atom

lang gewacht, nooit verwacht, maar toch gekregen...

This is called the Wu Zang (five organ) meditation for energetic protection
The yellow emperor classic said that all doctors should do this before treating any patient of any kind and before entering the treatment room
It surrounds you with a strong field of protective energy (wei qi)
It focuses on the six directions
Front, back, left, right, up, down
Or south, north, east, west, heaven and earth.
Its purpose is to extend each of the 5 organs energy far into the horizon to gather chi

Focus on the center of your body (about 3-4 cm below the navel) and then imagine opening up the top of your head
Start pulling chi from the heavens in thru the top of your head
Imagine it as bright shining divine light from the heavens filling your body and saturating it
Feel the body radiating this divine white light energy
Eventually when done more often the body will supersaturate and glow.

Now imagine this energy beginning to coalesce in the center core of your body that extends from the perineum to the top of the head. (if you sit straight this is a line/tube in front of your spine)
Forms an energetic tube of heavenly energy. This center core will begin to vibrate and resonate with the divine white light energy

Now imagine a golden yellow mist of chi arising out of the center of the earth and filling your body
As it fills your body it connects with your spleen and makes the spleen glow with golden yellow energy
Next feel this golden light earth energy swirl and envelop the center core of the white light divine energy. Merging together and synergizing
This represents the energy of your Intention to root and stabilize your power.

Now begin to focus on your heart.
Feel two whirlpools, a golden one enveloping the earth and directed in front of the spine, and another silvery white one from heaven down.
They form a kind of apple shape formed around a central tube just in front and along the spine.
Shape and widen the core so it is as wide as your hips, to amplify the amount you are running.

Now focusing on the heart and imagine a portal or gateway opening.
Then imagine the chi flowing of your heart like a red swirling wind in front of you. Full of power.
The red energy is the phoenix which represents your innate spirit, alive, graceful, yet powerful. The firebird protects you with your Spirit and fire

Now focus your attention to your lower back, the kidney area
Imagine a portal opening and the chi flowing out of your back like water.
Out of this water grows an enormous dark blue turtle whose shell protects you like a mighty shield .
Its shell is like it is on your back, for positioning purposes though. It will be behind you but not directly on your back. The looking is like eyes in the back of your head
This is the energy of your will power and the essence and will power of all your ancestors backing and supporting you

Focus on the lungs and visualize a portal opening on the right side of your body under the right ribs.
Imagine the lung chi flowing out to the right side of your body like steam, forming a white tiger as strong as steel.
This is your body's animal nature. It guards and protects you. with an animal passion for survival.

Focus on the liver and visualize a portal opening on the left side of your body, under the left ribs.
Imagine your liver chi flowing out of the left side of your body like steam forming a green dragon. Resilient and as sinewy as bamboo
This represents the body's divine nature. Guarding and protecting you with a spiritual passion for victory.


Each animal begins to rotate to the left. Protecting, stalking and defending the previous animals position.
Slowly begin to circle these energies counterclockwise and begin to increase their speed. Like a mighty wind around your body
The wind circulates around you faster and faster. Blending the colors into a rainbow of an energy bubble or into one big tube with mother of pearl color
(You can have the sensation that the turtle rolls around and jumps, the dragon extends and shortens... phoenix flies like an arrow, and the tigress runs, jumps and walks, but tends to fly too)
After you have your protective bubble around your body. Draw all the energies in thru the top of your head pulling it in now. Then return the energy of each color back to its original organ.
red to the heart.
dark blue to the kidneys
white to the lungs
green back to the liver
As the color flows back to each organ imagine that steam (white light) flowing out of the pores and filling up the energy bubble created by the animal rotation
(here you can see all kinds of little phoenixes, tigers, turtles and dragons.. hundreds of them.. )
This forms a solid connection between the body's internal organs and the body's external energy field.
Energy seems to keep on looping around, from the organ into the bubble, via the crown back into the organ and back again.

Imagine over your head a sprinkling of light, like stars...the Big Dipper and zoom in on the North Star. ( Can happen that you feel that the star becomes immensely large like a blanket spread over the horizon, shiny silvery white, which makes sense as it lies aligned with the earth's axis in the middle of the corona. )
Using your imagination you've just connected with the North Star and the result of your meditation is 'stored'. So now you should be able to call on the organ protection energy any time you need it instantly.

true by accident

``Very nice,'' I said. ``But why did you bring me up here?''

``It's time for you to see the fnords,'' he replied.

Then I woke up in bed and it was the next morning. I made breakfast in a pretty nasty mood, wondering if I'd seen the fnords, whatever the hell they were, in the hours he had blacked out, or if I would see them as soon as I went out into the street. I had some pretty gruesome ideas about them, I must admit. Creatures with three eyes and tentacles, survivors from Atlantis, who walked among us, invisible due to some form of mind shield, and did hideous work for the Illuminati. It was unnerving to contemplate, and I finally gave in to my fears and peeked out the window, thinking it might be better to see them from a distance first. Nothing. Just ordinary sleepy people, heading for their busses and subways. That calmed me a little, so I set out the toast and coffee and fetched the New York Times from the hallway. I turned the radio to WBAI and caught some good Vivaldi, sat down, grabbed a piece of toast and started skimming the first page.

Then I saw the fnords.

The feature story involved another of the endless squabbles between Russia and the U.S. in the UN General Assembly, and after each direct quote from the Russian delegate I read a quite distinct ``Fnord!'' The second lead was about a debate in congress on getting the troops out of costa Rica; every argument presented by Senator Bacon was followed by another ``Fnord!'' At the bottom of the page was a Times depth-type study of the growing pollution problem and the increasing use of gas masks among New Yorkers; the most distressing chemical facts were interpolated with more ``Fnords.''

Suddenly I saw Hagbard's eyes burning into me and heard his voice: ``Your heart will remain calm. Your adrenalin gland will remain calm. Calm, all-over calm. You will not panic. you will look at the fnord and see the it. You will not evade it or black it out. you will stay calm and face it.'' And further back, way back: my first-grade teacher writing FNORD on the blackboard, while a wheel with a spiral design turned and turned on his desk, turned and turned, and his voice droned on, IF YOU DON'T SEE THE FNORD IT CAN'T EAT YOU, DON'T SEE THE FNORD, DON'T SEE THE FNORD . . .

I looked back at the paper and still saw the fnords. This was one step beyond Pavlov, I realized. The first conditioned reflex was to experience the panic reaction (the activation syndrome, it's technically called) whenever encountering the word ``fnord.'' The second conditioned reflex was to black out what happened, including the word itself, and just to feel a general low-grade emergency without knowing why. And the third step, of course, was to attribute this anxiety to the news stories, which were bad enough in themselves anyway. Of course, the essence of control is fear. The fnords produced a whole population walking around in chronic low-grade emergency, tormented by ulcers, dizzy spells, nightmares, heart palpitations and all the other symptoms of too much adrenalin. All my left-wing arrogance and contempt for my countrymen melted, and I felt a genuine pity. No wonder the poor bastards believe anything they're told, walk through pollution and overcrowding without complaining, watch their son hauled off to endless wars and butchered, never protest, never fight back, never show much happiness or eroticism or curiosity or normal human emotion, live with perpetual tunnel vision, walk past a slum without seeing either the human misery it contains or the potential threat it poses to their security . . .

Then I got a hunch, and turned quickly to the advertisements. it was as I expected: no fnords. That was part of the gimmick, too: only in consumption, endless consumption, could they escape the amorphous threat of the invisible fnords. I kept thinking about it on my way to the office. If I pointed out a fnord to somebody who hadn't been deconditioned, as Hagbard deconditioned me, what would he or she say? They'd probably read the word before or after it. ``No this word,'' I'd say. And they would again read an adjacent word. But would their panic level rise as the threat came closer to consciousness? I preferred not to try the experiment; it might have ended with a psychotic fugue in the subject. The conditioning, after all, went back to grade school. No wonder we all hate those teachers so much: we have a dim, masked memory of what they've done to us in converting us into good and faithful servants for the Illuminati.

Free as in censorship

All,

I am very sorry things have come thusfar.. Having done some 60 projects with the SeeBeyond and Sun toolsets during the last 10 years, I would have preferred a brighter future.

It is clear that Oracle is merely hosting OpenESB and isn't in the business of investing valuable resources into maturing a promising toolset. On the other hand, Oracle hasn't shown any malice towards OpenESB and related initiatives despite many people feeling the need to alarm us on pending shutdowns of hosting facilities, which, when checked are up and running as usual. But it also doesn't seem to add much to realizing the potential of OpenESB, Mural, IEP and related technologies like OpenPTK, Keychain, OpenDI, Sailfin, OpenMQ.
Although there appear to be quite some developers and US based companies working along with Oracle on OpenESB. So, this is a rather fuzzy kind of situation which I would love to get more input on.
Something's got to give however..

Just forking or re-hosting this under the fire of argumentation using some very eloquent rethorical soundbytes of several previously unkown community members is not only ethically challengeable but also fatal to the community at it's current stage. I realize that, if such is ones purpose, one needs to move quickly now, because the merger of Sun (and its many high potential projects) into Oracle is finalizing day by day, surprising us with announcements we are not supposed to expect from an Oracle. But we're playing with impressions here, just like answering emails with non-sequiturs will gradually over time makes one think that the one answering has been giving valuable advices, while all they really did was stand close to a question often enough. Such are the intruiging workings on e.g. the "confirmation bias", one of human's many irrational mechanisms of reasoning.

Now, why do I think it is fatal, is related to Monty's struggles at the EU in trying to obtain the name MySQL again.. the goodwill, the reputation, all the traffic and associated support and maintenance income. Let's leave it in the middle if he 'deserves' this after having received part of a $1.000.000.000 payment (which wasn't paid in Sun stocks..), maybe it was right, maybe it was wrong, but he doesn't seem to be getting MariaDb off the ground in the similar way as with MySQL, nor is there a flight of disappointed customers moving his way. But we have seen this with other Open Source projects in the past, as well as the recent ones where finally the plug was being pulled after a major investment. If the owners of the intellectual property, the actual developers mindshare, have for the most part left the community move along and if the remainders choose to detach OpenESB from its originators.. how much of an investment is it going to take to revatilize it all. Enthusiasm is one thing, budget and scale are another.
And that leads me to think the proposed actions, despite its almost theatrical build-up during previous months, is simply hitting a law of nature.. which I would like to ask here. Are the benefits of Open Source Software dependent on the size of the community as well as the complexity of the software?

I can't escape the impression the benefits as listed on http://open-source.gbdirect.co.uk/migration/benefit.html are not realizable if the community isn't large and/or active enough. In fact, I think it's at a certain size and level of activity, the benefits implode and instead of the self-filtering assumption of "Open Source" we encounter a level of inbreeding which also involves effective lock-in for the end-customer. No vendor lock-in, but lock-in by ones solution provider.. as geo-political boundaries, the level of complexity, methodologies like SCRUM lead, along with recession induced cheap projects, effectively lead to implementations where only the original provider has any proficiency in maintaining it. Is this the goal of Open Source ? I very much doubt it so.

If I look at the number of people in the "OpenESB Users" on nabble.. there are actually some 1136 users. Of course some accounts are counted double. LinkedIn shows several groups, "JCAPS (Formerly SeeBeyond)" with 438 members, "Open ESB Community" with 573 and "Java CAPS" with 578.. So let's take the average and say there are some 681 users..
Now, only about 5% of these users were present in Brussels, and a percentage of these 5% are now positioning themselves "in the best interest of THE community" whereas the number of names indicates this only to be about 1% of the community.

The OpenESB Governance model has been set up in quite a meritocratic way, ".. projects within the OpenESB community have a very flat, lightweight governance structure. Decisions are made in public discussion on public mailing lists. There are few formal roles -- an individual's word carries weight in accordance with their contribution to the project. Decisions are preferably made by consensus, rather than voting--most decisions are of interest only to members of the community who will be affected by it. The combination of public mailing lists and consensus ensures that any person who could be affected by a decision both finds out about it, and has a voice in the discussion." - https://open-esb.dev.java.net/Governance.html
Yet if we look at the names listed and try to match with the top 20 posters according to Nabble.. as if this is a measure of proficiency of contribution, but that's another matter, we are left with 2 persons, both providing support to other mailers to the extend of their experience and capabilities. One of which clearly doesn't agree with the course of events. So, we have 0.15 % of the contributive users present at the summit, and taking the lead in speaking in name of THE community..

But if I read http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/10/rehost-and-carry-on/index.htm or http://www.forgerock.com/openesb-faq.html then we seem to be talking about the same community? I mean, this OpenESB community, not even the larger SeeBeyond-l on IT Toolbox or STC-User on Yahoogroups.
And why this course of actions? To whose benefit? The source is available.. one can automate a download every night to ensure always having the latest bits and pieces for the event that some *actually* happens. And if one looks deeper into the agreements.. the arrangements are similar to MySQL, or more adequate MySQL AB.. which was about Open Source, in some way, but also a slick company with a lean and agile business model which kept most development inhouse. Just like Sun did, and why this whole community has so much trouble in switching roles from relative passive user to active contributor. Maybe that is going to happen, maybe not, but with tearing down a struggling community I don't think anyone is done a favour, not the companies that built Binding Components, not the original developers of the core features, not the original mindshare and lessons-learned from SeeBeyond which significantly helped in shaping these products.
May it is meant well, but "Hell is paved with good intentions", and are we, the remaining 99% of THE community that blind that we do not notice ?

I would like to take a closer look at something.. Open Source is about "Free as in Freedom", it is about Liberty and not about Gratis, however the latter seems to prevail. Freedom actually has two sides, which have been proposed in the 1960's by philosopher Isaiah Berlin, positive and negative liberty. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/
Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense. Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes.

I think it is pretty clear, that what we have been experiencing is a display of 'negative liberty'. And I think Open Source Software is about 'postive liberty'.
As it happens, for gathering some seed capital today I was giving a presentation on the workings of propagation of emotional credentials within social networks, how this works, grows, and proven. This involves goodwill, reputation, adherence to promises, resolution of ambiguity and most importanly trust. Trust is very eery, and important.. and as a last note I like to share the definition used; "The attitude of expecting good performance from another party, whether in terms of loyalty, goodwill, truth, or promises. The importance of trust as a kind of invisible glue that binds society together is most visible when it is lost. Trust involves an element of risk, and epistemologists can have trouble categorizing it as rational, since it works best in advance, for example to motivate performance on occasions when defection may be to the advantage of the person trusted. Economically trust is precious, enabling parties to bypass the costly precautions and safeguards needed in transactions with parties whom one does not trust. Trustworthiness is a virtue, subsuming varieties such as truthfulness and fidelity."

Although Oracle representatives haven't been as involved as I would like them to be, they have only been disappointing. But I kind of got used to that after 2005 already.. But what I am seeing with the summit.. this has me loose trust in this community, if it can be hijacked that easily.
If anything, as I responded already I would like to see Oracle explore a co-sourcing and gradual merger of OpenESB with OW2 Petals, which is likely the only road ahead for a revival. OW2 appears to be morphing in quite a haven for Open Source initiatives seeking less politics but global opportunities. Any other course of events is just about postponing the start date on maintenance contracts for unsupported and dying software solutions. I have no vested interest in any direction whatsoever. This is just my personal opion, and when decisions influence other people's life I prefer dealing with facts, not just impressions, so I invite anyone as a souvereign individual to speak up.

As the American writer Oliver Wendell Holmes accurately observed;
The hydrostatic paradox of controversy. Don't you know what that means? Well, I will tell you.
You know that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other.
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way.
And the fools know it.

Take care,
Paul Peters
Fluxology SA