My thoughts are Sun is doing this to push more developer (Python developers) to use its VM and API, as a way to better compete with .Net (not a sin for sure)

But I am not that convinced they now love Python. Plus they only hired one developer, so it feels more like a marketing move. i.e. they dont seem in a hurry if they only hired just one developer to do it

Better support for Dynamic languages for the JVM is surely a good thing.

first MySQL, then Python, Sun seems to have melted its brains.

Robert X. Cringely has been harsh to Sun over the years:

Sun did not invent the engineering workstation, but they certainly perfected it. But where are workstations today? Gone, for the most part. Sun's workstation business is about the same size as SGI's, which is to say small. Sun is now a server company, but that won't last long either under the onslaught of Linux. Cheap Intel and AMD hardware running Linux is going to kill Sun unless the company does something so stop it, which they aren't. -- http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2003/pulpit_20030213_0007...

A lot of this comes down to how companies view themselves and what they are really good at. You'll notice, for example, that I didn't include Sun in my list of vital companies. That's not so much because Sun can be defined in terms of the others but that Sun is simply doomed. Their software isn't better, their hardware isn't better, and they can't see themselves as anything but a maker of hardware or software, so my simple recommendation is that they take the rest of their cash and try entering a hot new field like -- say -- space flight. Or making really fine cakes. The world will always need fine baked goods. Or just give it back to the shareholders. Really. -- http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060504_0008...

Remember my doom-and-gloom prediction last week for Sun Microsystems? That's based almost entirely on the company's inability to see itself moving from being vertically integrated (doing its own proprietary hardware and software) to competing on a level (that is horizontal) playing field. While that might make them just another PC vendor, don't worry about that happening because Sun would rather die first. And will. -- http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060511_0008...

If he's right then it will be interesting to see the details unfold. If he's wrong then it will be interesting to see Sun re-invent itself.

I'm curious where Sun is heading. As far as I can tell they're running out of options. With commodity servers and free operating systems what are they going to sell? I guess for the near futures there will still be business run by people that believe an "enterprise infrastructure" means buying expensive software and hardware, but as that population ages and retires I'm curious who will continue to buy this stuff.

I see four cases where you'd be eager to deal with Sun. The first case is an integrated, one-stop-shop for SAMP [Solaris, Apache, MySQL and Python running in a JVM].

The second case is where you're in a corner and need to scale up. I wouldn't be surprised if Sun offers servers with 2048 cores. Another case is where you've got a huge volume of data on a SAN and the throughput of Solaris justifies the cost of the licenses. A final case involves the energy saving gained from RISC. However, I've previously argued this latter case ignores the opportunity cost to a fast growing organisation and is therefore irrelevant to a start-up ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123587 ).

The other cases aren't important to new companies either. So, I agree with you that they're running out of options. I agree with Cringely that vertical integration isn't a big draw.

or manufactured some?

As far as I've experienced myself, jython is a great way to avoid the most horrible parts of the java language, while enjoying some of the niceties of the API and the many publicly available libraries.

So let's see if Ted and Frank manage to get jython out of its outdated state. That would be great.