Sometime between now and the end of Sun's fiscal year in June, its CEO Scott McNealy, the longest-serving CEO in the industry, will supposedly step down in favor of Sun's pony-tailed president Jonathan Schwartz.

That's what the buzz in and outside of Sun has been saying for the last few days.

"Unfortunately for Jonathan - and for Sun - there aren't many people who would spit on him if he were on fire," writes today's issue of Client Server News. "Besides, he's hasn't shown that he knows how to save the company but evidently he gets the job because it would take too long to find somebody else and get him acclimatized to the weird Sun culture in which everyone seems to think he's got a Frenchman's right to lifetime employment so long as the company's cash flow positive - and to heck with profits."

McNealy, who's been somewhat detached for a while anyway, will remain chairman.

Reportedly this is the work of the Sun board, which will, no doubt, have nice things to say about Scott's administration despite the fork they're holding to his back.

Meanwhile, Sun will supposedly announce massive job cuts in July. The operative word in that sentence is supposedly. Sun has always had a problem translating job cuts into enough job cuts.

Sun's renascent CFO Michael Lehman, who's heading up one of two internal cost-cutting committees - Jonathan and CTO Greg Papadopoulos are running the other one - knows he's got to take something like $1.4 billion out of Sun's out-of-kilter cost structure just to be competitive - but he reportedly still doesn't know how many jobs will be cut.

This time through, however, the exercise is supposed to hit Sun's precious R&D, which, quite frankly, hasn't been worth the money they've been lavishing on it. Sun's headcount is currently about 38,800, up 8,000 because of acquisitions.

Rumor has it that Scott could step down as early as in the next few days. Sun's quarter comes out on Monday so if he does, it either means Sun has hit a new low or that it's good enough to give him a high to go out on.

The smart money on Wall Street reckons his departure will be after the end of the company's fiscal year or failing that by the end of the calendar year.

We contacted Scott asking him whether the buzz was true. He sent back a stock answer - pretty much the same one he sent to the Wall Street Journal, which also heard the rumors: "You know I don't comment on rumor. This one is 22-years-old and still going strong though. We must be cool again if we are being talked about."

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