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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Cyber Cynic

If IBM/Sun breaks down, what happens to Sun?

13 comments

TAGS:IBM, IBM-Sun merger, Sun
IT TOPICS:Desktops & Servers, Enterprise Software & Services, Hardware, Management, Open Source, Software

As I write this, on Sunday evening, April 5th, it appears that the IBM/Sun deal is dead in the water. I say 'appears' because this wouldn't be the first, or last, time people threatened to walk out of a deal as a negotiating tactic. You see, I think IBM buying Sun is the best possible thing that could happen to Sun and its product lines.

I say that because Sun has been dying for years. I know it. You know it. The market, which has seen Sun's stock drop 79% in 2008 alone, certainly knows it.

Sun has been a sick company since its dot com boom days. In the aftermath of the dot-com crash, Sun initially couldn't decide if it was a hardware or a software company. Then, under CEO Jonathan Schwartz, Sun slowly, ever so slowly, decided it wanted to be an open-source software company instead of a closed-source business.

Sun took too long to change. The hardware business may have brought it billions in the 90s, but those days are long gone, torn down by the rise of the low-cost AMD/Intel Linux servers. Sun open-sourced Java, but it still keeps too heavy a hand over it despite the JCP (Java Community Process). Sun's billion-dollar purchase of MySQL just last year appears to have been a billion bucks poured down a rat hole as MySQL programmers leave Sun behind to work on their own versions of the popular open-source DBMS (Database Management System).

No one else except IBM seems to be interested in buying Sun. I can understand why. I think IBM is the one company that can take Sun's various technologies and make them profitable.

HP? Dell? They're hardware companies. Oracle? Why? So Larry Ellison could kill off MySQL? You can't kill off open-source software. Kill one project and two forks will appear to take its place. Microsoft!? There's no synergy what-so-ever.

Sun should be able to make it on its own. But, failures like the MySQL collapse tell me that they can't. How can you take such an over-whelming popular program as MySQL and, within a year, alienate both your customers and your developers? Darned if I know, but Sun managed it.

No, if Sun really does auger in to leave a smoking hole in the ground in place of a merger or acquisition, the fate of Sun will be the same one as another company that was once a multi-billion dollar name in Silicon Valley. The name? SGI (Silicon Graphics Inc.). This one mighty business' shattered remains were just sold to Rackable for $25-million.

It took SGI over a decade to slump from $3.66 billion in annual revenue to its first bankruptcy. Sun made $3.22 billion in its last quarter, but, without the IBM deal, its fall will come far, far faster.

IBM buying Sun?

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Quite a change from last Friday

Submitted by Alan Pae on April 6, 2009 - 3:43 P.M.

When this announced as a done deal with no hopes of going backwards. Three days later and it all goes up in smoke.

Sun will survive. Whether Sparc should or not is open for debate. Since I don't read the revenue breakouts and I don't know how much R&D money is spent on it I cannot comment effectively on this topic.

Sun is a company in transition and yes as some other posters have commented some of the software does feel like it just isn't quite there yet, but it will get there and Sun will still be around when it does.

alan

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IBM needs Sun - IBM's future is tied to Sun's acquisition

Submitted by Anonymous-Insider on April 6, 2009 - 1:51 P.M.

Recently, Rob Enderle wrote:

"There is some speculation that Solaris is the source of many of the core components in the current generations of Linux, and that IBM's acquisition could prevent another SCO event in the future, should someone less friendly acquire Sun instead." See http://tinyurl.com/dz6gza

Some of the rationale behind the speculation has been exposed at http://tinyurl.com/c9nzuu (see comments in the bottom of the main article).

If the speculation proves correct, IBM will have to pay Sun's asking price.

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Rob Enderle writes whatever

Submitted by David Gerard on April 7, 2009 - 9:50 A.M.

Rob Enderle writes whatever Microsoft pays him to. (This was directly and expressly documented in the Comes v. Microsoft Iowa anti-trust case discovery documents from Microsoft.) His statements here are simply factually incorrect. Solaris and Linux have little to nothing in common in their development history, and Sun's contributions to the Linux kernel are minimal.

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That's just wrong.

Submitted by motie38 on April 6, 2009 - 2:58 P.M.

Linux's kernel history and the GPL software that makes up most distributions is probably better documented than any other operating system out there. Don't forget The SCO Groups's attempt to extort money from the GPL'd operating system via the lawsuit turned what could have been a viable company into a whimpering whipped puppy, in spite of some backdoor funding from Microsoft. The Original SCO(Santa Cruz Operation) apparently read the book "Who Moved My Cheese?" and got out of the operating system business, in favor of their Tarantella product, which later was bought by none other than SUN. When Caldera(a Linux company) first acquired the SCO Unix line, I held hopes that the best parts of SCO might be relicensed under the GPL. But No!

I'd like to see a lawsuit accusing The SCO Group, or even Microsoft of incorporating source code originally released under the GPL into their closed source products. Then the onus would be on them to prove their products were free of GPL'd code. From a technical standpoint, it is certainly easier to believe that open source code found it's way into proprietary closed source products than the other way around.

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Microsoft is actually very

Submitted by David Gerard on April 7, 2009 - 9:53 A.M.

Microsoft is actually very good with this sort of thing. They ship GPL code with Interix (aka Windows Services for Unix or Subsystem for Unix Applications) and make source code available per license. Windows used to contain a lot of BSD code (entirely per license) and some programs included with it still do.

As for SCO, see today's Groklaw.

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Why must SUN be bought by anyone?

Submitted by theoldman59 on April 6, 2009 - 11:44 A.M.

If someone doesn't buy SUN, SUN will file for bankruptcy. If it is complete bankruptcy and if there is anything of value, others will buy those assets from the bankrupt company.

If SUN can be restructured, they will restructure.

The possibilities are endless at this point. Only thing for sure is that it will be a painful period for SUN and SUN customers.

As for Open Office, if SUN goes bankrupt and withdraws support, the community will pick it up somehow and somewhere. While losing SUN's support will be detrimental in some aspects, the community will have the opportunity to prove it can keep Open Office alive and compete.

Life will move forward with or without SUN

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IBM is the worst possible buyer

Submitted by TheMigrant on April 6, 2009 - 9:47 A.M.

Why not just sell it to the company with the most to gain from putting Sun down like a dog in the pound that the media claims nobody wants.

Sun has made a few bad choices and expressed a lot of arrogance in the market, but if you want to see even more arrogance, geez, IBM will destroy whatever Sun has for inventory. Imagine Java in the hands of IBM. Imagine having to deal with even more Indians because you will see Sun leave the US and become an Indian company.

Sun needs to trim down, and stay on its own until it can't do that anymore. IBM would ruin it. If you want to see technology disappear overnight, let IBM have its hands on Sun. These two companies couldn't be more different in culture. One hates America, and trying to rob as much as it can from the USA on the way out the door, the other is one of the few innovators out there as an American company.

As you suggest, MySQL and Java will persist on its own if Sun dies. . These technologies are protected in many ways now from being owned and shut down from a new owner.

--TheMigrant--
http://www.migrantdataworker.com

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@ IBM is the worst possible buyer

Submitted by Anonymous on April 7, 2009 - 10:30 A.M.

"Sun has made a few bad choices and expressed a lot of arrogance in the market, but if you want to see even more arrogance, geez, IBM will destroy whatever Sun has for inventory. Imagine Java in the hands of IBM. Imagine having to deal with even more Indians because you will see Sun leave the US and become an Indian company"

You have hit the nail on the head.

Also, I am still at a loss trying to understand why IBM hates America so much. Why would a company making record profits dump 10,000 Americans in the past 3 months into the unemployment line.
The 10,000 number is probably quite low because I understand IBM uses many non-IBM employees or contracted employees that don't get counted in the layoff numbers.

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WAS IBM'S OFFER TO SUN MICROSYSTEMS A FARCE ???

Submitted by MADAME P J BAILEY on April 6, 2009 - 4:37 A.M.

WAS IBM'S OFFER TO SUN MICROSYSTEMS A FARCE ???

VISIT -- www.ibmTheWidowMaker.com

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IBM was quite serious

Submitted by sjvn on April 6, 2009 - 12:01 P.M.

In the last few days, I've had IBMers tell me about plans on hot to integrate the new Sun staffers into their various branches. As far as IBM was concerned, this was all but a done deal.

Steven

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