The choice of John Loiacono's replacement could be key for the vendor's fortunes, and for the open-source community. (eWEEK.com)Sun Microsystems is losing its head of software, John Loiacono, to
Adobe Systems.
The Santa Clara, Calif., company on March 16 confirmed that John Loiacono, who took over as executive vice president of software in 2004 after then incumbent Jonathan Schwartz was appointed chief operating officer and president, is leaving and that March 24 will be his last day.
Loiacono has worked at Sun for some 20 years, starting his career as a sales representative, rising to become Sun's chief marketing officer, then leading the Solaris team and, ultimately, the entire software organization.
Under Loiacono's stewardship, Sun's flagship Solaris operating system was made available at no cost and then released as the OpenSolaris open-source project.
Sun is taking the same approach with its Java Enterprise System software as it has done with Solaris, and both Loiacono and Schwartz have repeatedly said the end goal is to open-source its entire software stack.
A Sun spokesperson told eWEEK on March 16 that Loiacono would not be available for an interview before his departure, but provided a statement saying Schwartz would oversee Loiacono's responsibilities as head of Sun's software division, adding that the company would undertake "a thorough search to replace John in which both internal and external candidates will be considered."
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Sun Loses Software Head to Adobe
