I was with you up until &quot;It&#x27;s entirely possible that we&#x27;d all be using Solaris on SPARC workstations by now if .NET hadn&#x27;t existed.&quot;<p>I admit I don&#x27;t follow the Windows world very closely, and I&#x27;m no developer, but Wikipedia says .NET got started in 2002, by which time Solaris was already on its way out.<p>I&#x27;m not sure what you see in .NET that you think killed Solaris&#x2F;SPARC, or where you see the overlap (where a lack of .NET could have presented an opportunity for Solaris), but from my point of view Solaris was an also-ran by 2002, even though I continued to administer it until after the Oracle acquisition.