Sun In Talks To Be Acquired By IBM 526
gandhi_2 writes "Sun Microsystems soared in European trading after a report that it was in talks to be acquired by IBM.
The Wall Street Journal, quoting "people familiar with the matter," reported Wednesday that International Business Machines was in talks to buy the company for at least $6.5 billion in cash, a premium of more than 100 percent over the company's closing share price Tuesday. Officials of Sun and IBM could not immediately be reached for comment."
Fate ofSun's products that compete with IBM? (Score:5, Interesting)
What would happen to Solaris, GlassFish, NetBeans, etc?
The NetBeans/GlassFish combo is a killer combination for developing Java EE/J2EE applications. I would hate to see those two products disappear, since they compete directly with Eclipse and Websphere from IBM.
Hardware (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Good (Score:2, Interesting)
A boon to open source (Score:3, Interesting)
While Sun has finally come around on open source. They still seem to do it with trepidation and even hamper some of their own works. If IBM purchases them, hopefully that will change. I would love to see them take the cuffs off of Java, OpenSolaris, MySQL, and zfs. By cuffs, I mean different things about different projects. (licensing, open up development, etc)
Re:For $6.5b (Score:3, Interesting)
In smaller territories (Like Jamaica) it's a different matter. Here we have 3 major Enterprise service Companies. One deals mainly in Sun and Dell gear (Fujitsu), Another deals mainly in HP and DELL (MCS) and the 3rd is IBM.
What this buyout would mean is that Fujitsu would no longer have an Enterprise Unix offering and customers who like them (like my current employer) would be screwed.
The really crappy thing is that I don't know anyone who uses SUN gear because of the features, price or service. Every one of them picked a peace of software which is only supported on SUN. So switching to a different Unix/RISK vendor is not really an option.
Re:Hardware (Score:2, Interesting)
Hopefully it'd be the end of Eclipse (Score:0, Interesting)
Netbeans is now easily 10 times better than the bloated corpse that is Eclipse. If this goes through they should kill Eclipse. At the very least they better not kill off NetBeans.
IT's a smart move for both (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm normally against mergers but I think this is one move that actually helps both, where synergies do apply.
Long thought that (Score:3, Interesting)
Nightmare (Score:1, Interesting)
This will be a nightmare for Java and open source in general.
IBM will kill the following fantastic Sun projects:
Netbeans
Glassfish
They won't kill OpenSolaris/zfs/Dtrace, but they'll probably close source enough of it. Same goes with MySql.
They'll scrap all of Sun's awesome documentation and replace it with their own cryptic documentation. They'll re-engineer Sun's products to generate cryptic error messages, like they do with DB2's wonderful error messages.
IBM makes horrible products. I should know, because my last two companies (including this one) have been IBM shops, and I have to use them every day.
Please God don't let this be true!
It might be useful to remember the past (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:IBM is NOT more pro-Open Source than Sun (Score:2, Interesting)
because sun don't want to get infected with GPLitis.
They GPL'd Java, didn't they? The CDDL is similar to the Mozilla, BSD and Apache licenses. Nobody complains about those projects. Why the double-standard when it comes to Sun?
Re:Good idea! (Score:4, Interesting)
Except, it was Sun's guys who designed CDDL, and on the DebConf, said they specifically wanted it to be incompatible with GPL. So it's not GPL's fault, it's a conscious decision of Sun's executives.
Re:First Thoughts ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Where would you take it? If you're intent on sticking with a pure Unix and don't want to have anything to do with Sun or IBM products anymore, it seems like the only alternative is HP-UX on Itanium. I imagine not many would be thrilled at this since, as you pointed out, pretty much the same thing happened when HP and Compaq merged and a lot of DEC's assets were abandoned.
If you've been using Solaris on x64 and don't want to throw out all your hardware, then Linux is probably your only migration path.
Re:For $6.5b (Score:5, Interesting)
"Are there any specific products that Sun sells that IBM doesn't have equivalents of? Sun has some good products" :)
Yes OpenOffice and Java.
Too bad IBM didn't buy Troll Tech as well.
I think IBM still has so anger issues with Microsoft. I could see them really pushing for a Microsoft free stack from top to bottom even if it was FOSS. IBM makes a lot of money from services. A free stack just means more services to sell.
I wonder if they will buy Opera next.
Imagine Solaris, KDE, Openoffice, and Opera all rolled into a nice Free distro
Re:IBM is NOT more pro-Open Source than Sun (Score:3, Interesting)
I think Sun has an open source strategy as a company, while IBM does open source not at the company level but more at the divisional/product level.
Re:First Thoughts ... (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me that MySQL and DB2 are very different products that serve different markets. I would expect IBM to continue both. Possibly move MySQL back toward its "RDBMS Lite" roots, where it is often a good choice when the full power of DB2 is just going to get in the way.
I don't know enough about the other product pairings to comment on them, but perhaps some of the others would dovetail in a similar fashion?
Re:I question the future of Open Office, Netbeans, (Score:3, Interesting)
As a current IBMer, mod parent up... IBM is where good products and companies go to die. They have this enormous pool of talented people and excellent products, yet still manage to bury it all under an idiotic, quarterly-results-bottom-line-screw-investment mentality. I've seen small groups in IBM do great things - and then they get noticed, sucked into some larger organization (they're duplicative and we're bigger so we're obviously right!) and any innovation, good ideas, or anything positive at all get swiftly crushed.
another sign the 1980s are over (Score:4, Interesting)
Sun had a brief renaissance in the 1990s with JAVA (Object-C done right), but it was too little too late.
Open Sourcing at Sun (Score:3, Interesting)
"Sun has open sourced:"
Sun has open sourced nearly everything they have. Which is why I'm at a loss to understand why IBM is buying them. There's no product Sun makes that has a distinct advantage over an IBM product, nothing Sun has that IBM would really consider an improvement over their products. Solaris over AIX? Eh, that's iffy.
There was a time I thought they'd buy Sun just to own Java, but now that its been open sourced, that reasoning is out the window. I think what IBM is really buying is quite simple: Sun's customer base. That base is fairly loyal, and still significant, and rather than just waiting another decade for Sun to die (and giving rivals a chance at those customers), IBM just decided that it was more practical to buy Sun out now. It's the only thing that makes sense to me. They'll probably integrate a few Sun products into their lineup, but frankly I think a lot of Sun's stuff will just be allowed to wither and disappear... become abandonware.
It should be Oracle, not IBM (Score:2, Interesting)
What the heck is Oracle waiting for? I truly think it should be Oracle the one buying Sun and not IBM. Oracle and Sun will definitely complement each other.
I'm sure Oracle would love to control MySQL. We know the story there. But for the most part, it would be totally complementary, and would put it in par with its bigger competitors. I would get servers, (finally) a decent IDE, an operating system, and a truckload of technology, like ZFS.
IBM acquiring Sun is not terribly bad, but will Oracle would be better.
Java (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM and Microsoft: symbiotic relationship (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM LOVES LOVES LOVES the fact that Windows is a font of unnecessary complexity.
IBM exists as a giant IT behemoth today, precisely because Windows sucks, and they know it. They will do nothing to jeopardize the Windows cash cow.
Even back in that brief window of time when OS/2 could be perceived as a viable alternative, IBM was busily rolling out their internal Windows-based desktop systems infrastructure, in most cases replacing an X-Term infrastructure. OS/2 never even had a chance in the real world, even though it had strong proponents for many years, they were all outside of IBM. Inside of IBM, OS/2 was relegated to a POS terminal system, then trimmed back to an ATM system when the POS systems went Windows.
As recently as a few years ago, when IBM senior managers were betting big on Linux, and bragging publicly about investing a billion dollars a year (and probably more these days) on Linux, IBM customers couldn't even get IBM to submit proposals based on Linux for simple tasks for which Linux was very well suited. IBM instead proposed convoluted, unstable Windows-based "solutions" which cost more. Customers could BEG IBM for Linux based solutions and not get them. IBM actively fought against efforts at their customers to actually use Linux.
Re:A boon to open source (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm really walking a fine line here. I need to express that everything I state and stated is my personal opinion. Also Sun was my first real job after college and I owe everything I learned about being a good programmer thanks to the fantastic engineers I worked with. Working with them taught me everything, nothing I learned in college was right. I entered Sun as not very good at my job and left finally trained for success. It was a fabulous place with even better people and I owe the fact that I am a decent coder now to those few valuable enjoyable years as Sun.
You only looked at one aspect of what I described. I may be revealing more than I should. The fact is that 2001 one very key engineer brought-up a question. It was in fact should Sun release solaris under a license specifically incompatible with the GPL to protect Sun. The consensus was reached that Sun should not in a day or so. So you see right then and there the anti GPL as the prime reason is debunked. In fact there was a number of people that felt that the GPL was best (others liked more MIT or BSD likes) because it guaranteed Sun could use what was distributed by others. Unfortunately the lawyers then brought-up all the patent and contracts crap-ola when open sourcing solaris became a formal process with semi-regular meetings. At that point some people were tasked with combing through ON to decide what could be released and what needed changes. That involved the person in the post you responded to that I wrote before. This was a huge task. During that work the per file aspect of a potential license became a clear requirement.
At the same time Danese (if what she said can be trusted) or someone she asked contacted someone high up in FSF (no not Stallman) and some effort was made to get GPL to address the patent garbage. People with business sense soon realized that there was no way that this would be done in time. The lawyers were squirmy at if a new bullet proof GPL could even be created. Sun was a potential huge target for lawsuits after all. So out of this the CDDL was born. The faq I previously linked to gives the same information in a responsible way.
Danese's comments were untrue and hurtful to Sun and its employees. They have been used as evidence by GPL zealots at spreading this FUD for years now. My guess as to the reason she made those comments was that she was upset about the GPL not working out. In the times I saw her she thought very highly of herself and her point of view. Again that is all my opinion.
Finally before all of this a person that was at that point a VP at Sun was convinced of the value of open sourcing solaris for the future of Sun by a handful of engineers. He worked very hard to convince the other people at high levels. That had more to do with open solaris than anything else in the end. There were no fear of Linux sentiments at that point early on, dot com was still doing great at that point, it was more of a Sun needs to do what IBM and RedHat are argument.
You do not see people commenting on this publicly from inside Sun because that is not the right thing to do. I hope what I have written here does not cause me grief in the future but I think it is important to get my opinion of what happened out there because over the years there have been less scrupulous people making damaging comments.
Re:First Thoughts ... (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, I don't think there's a question of which OS would win in an IBM buyout of Sun... Linux trounces Solaris because IBM has put millions of dollars into Linux for truly first class support of POWER, getting the kernel to support all of the nice features like hotplug memory add / remove and other really neat hardware support. Solaris would have to be ported to POWER from scratch and, in turn, have millions spent on it just to get it up to par with Linux which doesn't make any sense. And even with cool features that Linux doesn't do (ahem, DTrace), it would take far less effort to just update and improve existing Linux based tools (SystemTap) or develop a new tool from scratch, rather than dumping money into the OS just to get them.
makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
This makes a lot of sense: Sun is mostly about Java these days, but they haven't figured out hot to monetize Java. IBM, on the other hand, is making quite a bit of money with Java.
Sun has been running Java into the ground slowly. Hopefully, IBM can put Java on the right track again: fully open source it, fix its performance problems, provide better native interfaces, provide better integration with Linux, enable interoperability with Mono/.NET, etc.
Re:For $6.5b (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps, but I think that IBM would be getting one hell of a sweet deal
I don't think so. Sun's core server and OS business is in deep trouble, and Java is under threat as well.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Java (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I doubt that Java is the entire motivation for the acquisition talks, but it certainly could be. The rest of Sun is mostly a liability for IBM, which already has several too many operating systems, and more than enough hardware, for example. IBM will spent an enormous fortune, after the acquisition, trying to figure out how to keep Sun customers, who will, by and large, be shopping around for alternatives.
IBM managers are smart enough to know that they cannot and will not run Sun as a separate division indefinitely, and thereby magically capture another big chunk of the server market. Oh, they may announce that intention, and pretend to do that for a few years, all the while slowly strangling Sun by depriving it of the R&D that would be required to keep its technologies alive, and its customers happy.
Re:For $6.5b (Score:5, Interesting)
Solaris and Linux are hopeless as far as providing a windows alternative. As far as a realistic alternative to Windows, Linux wouldnt know how to do it if it hit them in the head. For Linux to really be a viable Windows alternative it is vital that it makes it easy for binary only drivers and apps to be made for Linux and to provide stable driver ABIs. Linux has to stop being so arrogant in assuming everything they use will come with a distro, and realise that real users will want to use third party software and drivers. They also have to assume that a user may want to choose between using different drivers and will need to be easily be able to choose a manufacturer supplied driver. basically the user has to be able to throw in a disc, click install and have the hardware or software work. Gnome meanwhile have entirely the wrong idea about what makes software useable. I dont know where they got the idea that making software rigid, inflexible and feature sparse makes it more useable, but it doesnt. Gnome is an inflexible memory hogging disaster that has only gotten worse. The idea of good design is to make software configurable and flexible as possible, but place lesser used features in advanced screens. useability is all in layout, not in number of features. Software should work out of the box with reasonable defaults with no configuration but user should be able to fine tune them if they wish. This allows users as little or as much control as they need and allows them to grow into the software.
Re:For $6.5b (Score:5, Interesting)
It was too busy "competing" with MS to focus on it's core market - high performance computers.
Sun did waste a lot of effort on desktop initiatives. (Still does [sun.com].) But that's never dominated management's attention. It's just what got the most press, because the issues of hardware manufacturing and sales don't make good copy.
(Right now, I'm working on a system that's in the process of being upgraded from Hypertransport 1 to Hypertransport 3. Doesn't that send chills up and down your spine? No?)
The problem is not that management didn't pay attention to the hardware business — they paid plenty. The problem is that they kept selling to the 1998 marketplace long after the game changed. In 1998, there was so much demand for computers, and people were so unpicky about costs, Sun could sell expensive systems just by boasting how powerful they were. Then the dotcom bubble burst, and people either went out of business or survived by looking for ways to do business cheaper. And a big way to cut costs is to switch from proprietary architectures (SPARC, MIPS, PowerPC) to the commodified x86.
Took Sun a long time to come to terms with that. When the bubble burst, the party line at Sun was that it was a temporary downturn and they could just ride it out. Well, the downtown was indeed temporary, but the customers never came back. They wanted commodity systems, and Sun was only working on SPARC systems. Yes, they had acquired Cobalt, but the SPARC-uber-alles mindset at Sun soon drove the Cobalt people away and destroyed a product line Sun had spent $2 billion acquiring. When they finally admitted to themselves that they had to change with the marketplace (and there are lots of Sun people who still haven't drunk that koolaid) they had to build up the business all over again, partly by outsourcing design, partly by buying up yet another x86 company [byteandswitch.com]. Ironically, that company was founded by Sun co-founder Andy Bectholsheim, who had left Sun partly because of this very issue.
So, despite the attention it got in the press, the Sun-MS feud was just a sideshow. What really hurt was their inability to adapt.
Re:A boon to open source (Score:1, Interesting)
This ad hominem attack on Danese is uncalled for.
I can tell you this much of what I know. When Sun asked me and Groklaw to help with the CDDL license drafting, I was told that the execs had no problem with the GPL. It was the Unix guys. Rather than risk a revolt from Sun engineers, they did the CDDL.
Now, the fact that this is what I was told doesn't mean that it's true, or the only truth. But it is what I was told at the time. And it matches what Danese said.
I told Sun back then that they were creating a little island for themselves with the license and that they'd do much better making it GPL or at least GPL-compatible, but I got nowhere, because they said the engineers were adamant. I think current events indicate my advice was probably right. Clinging to your own hardware wasn't effective as a plan, and creating your own license that is incompatible with the most popular FOSS license wasn't a great idea either.
PJ, Groklaw
who probably should get an account for moments like this