Scott McNealy, who was the longtime CEO of Sun Microsystems and still is company chairman, has been absent from the company's JavaOne conference in San Francisco this week.

A longtime fixture at the event even after stepping down as CEO in 2006, McNealy instead is in Washington, DC on business for Sun Fed, a Sun subsidiary that works with federal government accounts. McNealy is president of Sun Fed.

McNealy had been known for presentations that injected humor into the event, such as offering in 2006 a Top 10 list of advantages to no longer being CEO.