We had a town hall style event today and some Oracle brass were there to answer some questions.

What struck me most about the mood of the questions was the pride and ownership that Sun employees have over our products. Not only was there a paternal pride over the products we birthed, we had it for those that we adopted.

But that is only the tip of the iceberg, we wanted to know if our customers were going to be looked after. We have an emotional investment with them as well. I still have friends who buy Sun gear and I'm quick to answer their questions when they get stuck. I'm sure others do that as well.

I think that as long as a company's culture embraces that pride, their customers will get a product that they love. We've seen that to date with Sun and OpenSolaris - Sun employees want the quality poured into Solaris to remain in OpenSolaris. That is probably the biggest differentiator between Linux and OpenSolaris. And if you don't understand that pride and investment, you'll never accept OpenSolaris as open source.

But if you do understand how individuals at Sun own quality, then you'll understand how our products and customers are going to be looked after.