@Chris Mellor: Please Understand Open

The writer Chris Mellor states, "Sun's proprietary SPARC microprocessor architecture and the hardware built using it is..."

Once again, a writer does not understand what proprietary is.

Merriam-Webster says "proprietary" is - "something that is used, produced, or marketed under exclusive legal right of the inventor or maker"

http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/proprietary

SPARC is a SPECIFICATION created through various groups of contributors, published, and implemented by anyone who wants to.

http://sparc.org/

SPARC is not owned by SUN, rather it is a specification which MANY companies, both past and present, have created microprocessors for, sometimes competing against SUN.

Historically, there have been many SPARC vendors - many had competed with SUN.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC

* Bipolar Integrated Technology (BIT)

* Cypress Semiconductor

* Fujitsu and Fujitsu Microelectronics

* HAL Computer Systems

* LSI Logic

* Metaflow Technologies

* Ross Technology, Inc

* Solbourne Computer

* Weitek

* Afara Websystems

I am not sure what the rest of the article says. If the writer can't understand what the word "proprietary" means, what "SPARC" is, and how those terms relate to SUN as well as other vendors, the article is probably not worth it's bits in transmission.