Scott McNealy last night stepped down from his post as chief executive of Sun Microsystems, the Silicon Valley firm he founded in the 1980s. He will remain chairman of the board. McNealy, 51, will be replaced as CEO by Jonathan Schwartz, 40, effective immediately.
Schwartz joined Sun in 1996 upon the company's acquisition of Lighthouse Design, where he was chief executive officer. He was named Sun's president and chief operating officer in April 2004.
McNealy founded Sun Microsystems along with Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy and Vinod Khosla in 1982. He was a key opponent of Microsoft in anti-trust actions but made peace with the software rival in 2004 as Microsoft paid a $1.6 billion settlement.
Sun is known for its open-source software programmes such as OpenOffice.org, OpenSolaris and Java, and was involved in efforts to build a network computer that would use alternatives to Microsoft's operating systems.
