Bill Joy has been described in many ways. Edison of the Internet. Wizard of UNIX. The brightest mind in computing. Now he has a new title: unemployed. By choice, of course. Joy, 48, one of Sun Microsystems’ co-founders in 1982, announced this week he will leave his post as Sun’s chief scientist.Joy exchanged e-mail with The Denver Post’s Kris Hudson last week on his split from Sun and his plans:As you depart Sun, will you remain in Aspen? What happens to the rest of your operation in Aspen?It is not my decision, but I expect that Sun will close the facility. I will remain in Aspen, as I am divorced and my wife and I share our kids, who live here.What prompted your departure from Sun?I have worked for Sun for 21 years, and on UNIX at Berkeley for seven years before that. Twenty-eight years is a long time.I had done most of what I wanted to do at Sun by 1987, then decided to stay to take an opportunity to rewrite UNIX in an object-oriented language (a project which failed because I couldn’t find a suitable language). But I committed to stay for five-plus years more to do this. I was ready to leave in 1994-95 when Java and the Web came along. And I signed up to do that and a lot of other related projects, all of which are now well underway. So I ‘‘re-enlisted’’ twice, and having all the projects I wanted to do in flight, am ready for something new.What do you plan to do next? After 28 years, talk to people, look around, and write some software myself (group of one). I’m still very interested in reliable software and computing; I’d love to write some (Java) software, which helped somehow with the vulnerability of the Net. I haven’t worked out how this could happen, but I am going to think about it. Longer term, I’d like to work with a small group of smart people on something important that others aren’t doing. (The New York Times)
