I don't typically read an article and get as annouyed as I did with this week's Forbes cover story "The New Barbarians or The Cheap Revolution."  This is an article all about the changes in the technology industry that has been taking place over the lase maybe 5 years.  I have no problem with the premise behind all of this.  "Free Software. Bargain chips.  The always-on Internet."  All completely valid.

But the real story was about Bill Coleman's new company Cassatt and how it is a perfect example of the new companies that are a part of this revolution.  When I read this, my blood pressure started to go up.

• Bill does not open source his software.  But I would bet that his product has open source software in it ...
  
• Bill's software is not free or inexpensive, so how is he a part of this new model?!?!
  
• It is actually REALLY EXPENSIVE.  The example in the article talks about $2M to install on a 1,000 server cluster.
  
• He has raised $30M * 2 to fund his company.  Sounds pretty old world to me!
  

Then using Sun as an example of one of the technology giants in danger really put me over the edge.

• Sun (we) use to make most of our revenue on big vertically scalable servers.  But we have since added the most performant, power conscious and competitively priced set of servers in the industry!
• We contribute more open source software than any other company.
• We have even open sourced our chips!!
  
• We have dramatically changed the economics of software with our Java Enterprise System.
• We have eliminated the barrier to access of our software by making it available for FREE.
  

The list goes on and on ...

Granted the article includes a few other examples and companies, but it was really all about Bill and Cassatt.  It was either a great advertising piece or it is Bill trying to get back at Sun for hiring back his former EVP of Software - Rich Green.  You should read the article and decide for yourself.