Sun Microsystems' co-founder, Bill Joy, would leave the company to pursue other interests.

Joy was instrumental in the development of a Unix variant called Berkeley Software Distribution. At Sun, he headed the team that produced the Java programing environment in which programs could run regardless of operating system.

Joy, who most recently served as Sun's chief scientist, led engineers who invented Sun's SPARC microprocessor and the Unix-based Solaris operating system, the foundations on which the company became a major force in computing.

The impact on Sun's operations will be minimal beyond the perception that another top talent is jumping ship, said Daryl Plummer, an analyst for the technology research group Gartner Inc.

Sun's sales have been declining recently because of weak corporate spending and the increasing power of inexpensive computer chips that run another Unix variant, the low-cost Linux operating system.

By: DocMemory
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