Although the two men are at much different points on the political spectrum, with McNealy an outspoken conservative, they have complemented each other on business strategy. ‘‘He and I can finish each other’s sentences,’’ McNealy said. ‘‘We’re very aligned.’’

Indeed, partners and customers marveled at McNealy’s staying power. Sun, based in Santa Clara, California, has essentially performed well in three separate eras of computing, stumbling badly at times in the last five years.

The company was founded as a maker of computer workstations for technical and scientific computing applications in the early 1980’s and rose to prominence based on the computing world’s shift away from proprietary mainframes and minicomputers and toward commodity components and open standards.

In the late 1980’s and early 90’s, it built a computing clientele on Wall Street and in corporate computing markets. Finally, the rise of the commercial Internet and the initial explosion of Web server computers swept Sun to peak revenue of $18.25 billion in 2001.

But in 2000 telecommunications companies abruptly stopped spending, and Sun, which had taken to calling itself ‘‘the dot in dot-com,’’ found itself a victim of a financial meltdown in the computing equipment market.

Still, McNealy’s legacy will be not only the company he built, but also a generation of technology leaders who worked under him, including Zander, now the chief executive at Motorola; Carol Bartz, chairwoman of Autodesk, the engineering software firm; and Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google.

‘‘Scott is one of the great leaders of Silicon Valley,’’said Schmidt, who worked for 14 years at Sun. ‘‘I’m just floored that this happened. I believed that he would continue on for the next 50 years.’’

... contd.