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Sun Microsystems
 Logo used from the 1990s until acquisition by Oracle | |
 Headquarters campus in Santa Clara, California | |
| Company type | Public |
|---|---|
| Industry | |
| Founded | February 24, 1982 |
| Founders | |
| Defunct | January 27, 2010 |
| Fate | Acquired by Oracle Corporation |
| Headquarters | , U.S. |
| Products |
|
| Owner | Oracle Corporation (2010) |
Number of employees | 38,600 (near peak, 2006)[1] |
| Website | www (see: archived version at the Wayback Machine) |
Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010[2] which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed significantly to the evolution of several key computing technologies, among them Unix, RISC processors, thin client computing, and virtualized computing. At its height, the Sun headquarters were in Santa Clara, California (part of Silicon Valley), on the former west campus of the Agnews Developmental Center.
Sun products included computer servers and workstations built on its own RISC-based SPARC processor architecture, as well as on x86-based AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon processors. Sun also developed its own storage systems and a suite of software products, including the Unix-based SunOS and later Solaris operating systems, developer tools, Web infrastructure software, and identity management applications. Technologies that Sun created include the Java programming language, the Java platform and Network File System (NFS).
In general, Sun was a proponent of open systems, particularly Unix. It was also a major contributor to open-source software, as evidenced by its $1 billion purchase, in 2008, of MySQL, an open-source relational database management system.[3][4] Other notable Sun acquisitions include Cray Business Systems Division, Storagetek, and Innotek GmbH, creators of VirtualBox. On April 20, 2009, it was announced that Oracle would acquire Sun for US$7.4 billion. The deal was completed on January 27, 2010.[5]
- ^ "Company Info". Sun.com. Sun Microsystems. Archived from the original on August 28, 2006. Retrieved December 4, 2006.
- ^ "Churchill Club Presents: Scott McNealy in Conversation With Ed Zander" (Press release). Churchill Club. February 24, 2011. Archived from the original on August 2, 2020. Retrieved October 13, 2019.
- ^ Lee, Matt (November 30, 2006). "Sun begins releasing Java under the GPL". Free Software Foundation. Retrieved June 14, 2011.
FSF president and founder Richard Stallman said, "I think Sun has contributed more than any other company to the free software community in the form of software. It shows leadership. It's an example I hope others will follow."
- ^ "Sun to Acquire MySQL". MySQL.com. 2008. Archived from the original on July 18, 2011. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
- ^ Stephen Shankland (January 27, 2010). "Oracle buys Sun, becomes hardware company". CNET News. Archived from the original on August 21, 2010. Retrieved June 14, 2011.
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