New York, Sept 10: Sun Microsystems Inc. has said its legendary chief scientist Bill Joy, a software pioneer who helped lay the foundation of the Internet, was leaving the embattled company he helped found. Joy, 48, won a following far beyond the engineering community with his meditations on the future, such as a Wired magazine article arguing that technology could endanger humanity's survival, winning wider awareness of Sun, a computer maker whose machines run networks and help power the Web.

Sun Micro built itself largely on software that runs major computer systems which was developed by Joy and his team during 21 years at Sun and 7 years before that at the University of California, Berkeley.
Sun helped put Silicon Valley on the map, and the company's networking technology put it in the vanguard of the computer industry at the start of the Internet era, although competition has eroded its influence in recent years.
"It would be hard to overstate his importance to the Internet," said Jean Bozman, vice president of research at International Data Corporation. Bureau Report