I am old and was around for Sun's demise. Aravind's reasoning is 100% true. Sun sold web servers that cost a million dollars each, with expensive services wrapped around them. They could do incredible things small Linux servers could not. For example, you could hot swap cards out of a Sun server WHILE it was running.
But a fully loaded Linux web server cost maybe $10,000, so you could buy ten and still save 90%. People rushed for the cheap Linux boxes. Sun tried to adapt, but the whole org was built around million-dollar servers. They just couldn't change. This all happened very quickly, about two years if I recall correctly.
Lots of parallels to expensive cloud AI and local AI. If Kimi K3 ships open weights as promised, you could run it on a couple of future Mac M5 or M6 or M7 systems (whatever ends up shipping) for maybe $50,000.
And local AI is the worst it will ever be today. Think where it is in two years. I don't think Fable 5 at $50/MTok output is sustainable.
