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Sun Microsystems Businesses IBM

IBM About To Buy Sun For $7 Billion 699

plasticsquirrel was one of several readers to send in the sharpening rumors that IBM is on the verge of acquiring Sun Microsystems, as we discussed last week. The pricetag is reportedly $7 billion. According to the NYTimes's sources, "People familiar with the negotiations say a final agreement could be announced Friday, although it is more likely to be made public next week. IBM's board has already approved the deal, they said." After the demise of SGI, one has to wonder about the future of traditional Unix. If the deal goes through, only IBM, HP, and Fujitsu will be left as major competitors in the market for commercial Unix. And reader UnanimousCoward adds, "Sun only came into the consciousness of the unwashed masses with the company not being able to get E10K's out the door fast enough in the first bubble. We here will remember some pizza-box looking thing, establishing 32 MB of RAM as a standard, and when those masses were scratching their heads at slogans like 'The Network is the Computer.' Add your favorite Sun anecdote here."
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IBM About To Buy Sun For $7 Billion

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  • "commercial UNIX" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Swampash ( 1131503 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:40AM (#27443927)

    If the deal goes through, only IBM, HP, and Fujitsu will be left as major competitors in the market for commercial Unix.

    Really? I'm posting this comment from a workstation running a commercial UNIX. I'm using a Mac.

    • by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:45AM (#27444035)

      Calling MacOSX a 'commercial unix' just doesn't taste right coming out of the mouth. It's like calling Microsoft Windows a 'Server Operating System' or an 'Enterprise Solution'.

      Yeah, there are people who use them that way, but that way madness lies.

      'Enterprise Solution' tastes pretty damn foul all by itself.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by rolfwind ( 528248 )

        Calling MacOSX a 'commercial unix' just doesn't taste right coming out of the mouth. It's like calling Microsoft Windows a 'Server Operating System' or an 'Enterprise Solution'.

        OS X is a unix. It is commercial in that it's being sold and to a large market. I don't see the problem.

        • by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:12AM (#27444449)

          OS X is a unix. It is commercial in that it's being sold and to a large market. I don't see the problem.

          The difference being the market. One is a server market, the other is a cult.

          • by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:22AM (#27444599)

            The difference being the market. One is a server market, the other is a cult.

            You mean a religion. A cult is a religion that just started out and has yet to garner success.

            Besides, Apple can claim to be a derivative of Christianity and/or Judaism, giving it instant credibility. One has the Book of Job, and I'm sure the other has the book of Jobs. And every other products is sold as the second coming.

            • by matelmaster ( 1040950 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:57AM (#27445153)

              The difference being the market. One is a server market, the other is a cult.

              You mean a religion. A cult is a religion that just started out and has yet to garner success.

              Besides, Apple can claim to be a derivative of Christianity and/or Judaism, giving it instant credibility. One has the Book of Job, and I'm sure the other has the book of Jobs. And every other products is sold as the second coming.

              Sup Dawg! I heard you like quotes so we put a quote in your quote so you can quote while you quote!

              Ps: Please don't hit me!

            • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

              by C4Cypher ( 1310477 )
              If we angle this right, we might be able to troll 4chan into protesting outside Apple Stores all over the country.
          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by cptnapalm ( 120276 )
      • by Jurily ( 900488 ) <<jurily> <at> <gmail.com>> on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:00AM (#27444251)

        'Enterprise Solution' tastes pretty damn foul all by itself.

        Because it doesn't really mean anything if you're not playing buzzword bingo.

        • by Znork ( 31774 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:33AM (#27444795)

          Sure it does, 'Enterprise Solution' is an industrial grade solvent used for dissolving piles of money stuck to the floor of vaults. It's also available in 25ml bottles for removing embarrassingly large numbers on corporate bank account statements.

          • by Savage-Rabbit ( 308260 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @11:10AM (#27446431)

            Sure it does, 'Enterprise Solution' is an industrial grade solvent used for dissolving piles of money stuck to the floor of vaults. It's also available in 25ml bottles for removing embarrassingly large numbers on corporate bank account statements.

            It is? I thought a proper Enterprise Solution is what you get when you blend [youtube.com] your IT infrastructure properly.

    • mac != unix (Score:3, Interesting)

      by russlar ( 1122455 )

      Really? I'm posting this comment from a workstation running a commercial UNIX. I'm using a Mac.

      Try running a mac os x server and a solaris server, side by side, running the same application, and tell me that mac os x is truly unix. Any OS requiring >90% of configuration changes to be made in a GUI does not count as UNIX, in my book.
      I'll grant you that OS X is UNIX-certified, but OS X is _not_ SVR4 UNIX.


      PS- That burning you smell is my karma going up in flames.

      • Re:mac != unix (Score:5, Informative)

        by e4g4 ( 533831 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:49AM (#27444105)

        Any OS requiring >90% of configuration changes to be made in a GUI does not count as UNIX

        100% of configuration changes in OS X can be made from the console. There is not a single setting that *requires* a GUI.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Noke ( 8971 )

          Really? I love doing everything from the command line, but am unsure how to do the following (at least I can't find anything after scouring google for some of these). Is it possible to do the following? I just picked some from looking at the system preferences pane:

          * Time Machine: Configure what to back up
          * Time Machine: Restore files
          * Configure Parental Controls
          * Change an account's picture
          * Configure an account's login options
          * Configure when to put the monitor/computer to sleep
          * Change the desktop bac

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by danamania ( 540950 )
            plists are xml. If you don't count those as human readable, you may as well not count *any* text files as human readable.
          • Re:mac != unix (Score:5, Informative)

            by e4g4 ( 533831 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:13AM (#27445411)
            First of all, many things that live in a plist can be edited with the 'defaults' command - no file editing required.

            For those things that can't be editted with the defaults command - and can't be edited with your favorite text editor, 'plutil' is your friend - you can convert plists between binary and xml very easily. Spotlight indexing for a specific volume can be turned on or off using the mdutil command, and indexing of specific subdirectories of a given volume is (i believe) controlled by metadata on the directory in question.

            You can list all the plist domains controllable by defaults by doing 'defaults domains' that'll give you a (huge) list of plists controllable by the defaults command. In there, com.apple.desktop has all the desktop background picture settings.

            Disabling automatic login is an ldap property, i believe, and you can disable it by using dscl (at least in leopard, in tiger and earlier that property lived in the now dead netinfo database).

            Admittedly, there's one item on your list that I can't, off the top of my head, figure out - FileVault. If I didn't have work to do - I'd spend some time figuring it out - but, alas, I do.
      • Re:mac != unix (Score:5, Insightful)

        by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:51AM (#27445073)

        90% of configuration changes to be made in a GUI does not count as UNIX, in my book.

        According to all technical definitions, OS X is Unix. The kernel is XNU which is based on Mach with BSD subsystems. Its roots can be traced to OPENSTEP based on NextSTEP's OS. All that qualifies it as Unix. The early versions of OS X were POSIX compliant. That qualifies it as Unix. As of 10.5 on Intel (Leopard), Apple went through the long procedure to have it blessed as Certified UNIX 03. In my mind OS X is what Linux on desktop has tried to be: The stability of Unix systems with a GUI that the average person can use.

    • by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:54AM (#27444167) Homepage Journal

      True. Apple made a Unix so user friendly that people forget it is Unix.
      And so small and light that it runs on a phone.
      Maybe they really are a great company.

      • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:04AM (#27444309) Homepage Journal

        True. Apple made a Unix so user friendly that people forget it is Unix.
        And so small and light that it runs on a phone.
        Maybe they really are a great company.

        Apple made a Unix so Baroque that you can't manage it from the command line.
        They took an operating system usable on a NeXTStep with a 25MHz 68040 and made its file browser unresponsive on a machine with dual 2 GHz processors.
        They opened and then closed the kernel, they bury knowledge base articles that make them look bad (e.g. B&W G3 Rev.1 UDMA data corruption errors which were in the TIL but didn't make it into the KB even though higher and lower-numbered TIL articles were transferred) and they locked the iPhone so that you can't run third-party software without hacking your phone and voiding your warranty.

        If you think Apple cares about anything but your money, you must have drank all the Kool-Aid.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

          If you think any company cares about anything but your money then you have drank the coolaid.
          I run third party apps on my iPod touch. They are approved apps from the app store but still 3rd party.
          Once they jail break version 3 I will probably do a jail break but I have no real want for any of the jail broken apps yet.
          Hey so Apple does what Microsoft and Intel have done.
          They still made a user friendly Unix. You may say NeXT did but they where even more expensive than Apple.
          As far as the lack of command line

        • by avalys ( 221114 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:21AM (#27444581)

          What else should Apple care about besides my money?

          I'm glad they care about getting my money, because it means they will continue to try to build products that I want to pay for.

    • Context: (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:56AM (#27444191) Journal
      TFS says "one has to wonder about the future of traditional Unix" in the immediately preceding sentence. While OSX is indeed commercial and UNIX, it is quite arguably not "traditional Unix". Its distribution in the wild is almost the opposite of most others, quite common on laptops, not very common on desktops, fairly common in specific workstation markets, quite uncommon in smallish servers, and nonexistent in big iron applications. "Traditional Unix" tends to imply lots of big iron, a fair number of smallish servers, and some workstations, with minimal or no desktop/laptop presence.

      Further, most "traditional Unix" setups, if they have graphics at all, use X. OSX supports doing so; but the mac users' howls of protest are deafening around any program that actually tries to do so. OSX is UNIX; but there are solid reasons for saying that it is hardly "traditional Unix".
    • Re:"commercial UNIX" (Score:5, Informative)

      by af_robot ( 553885 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:26AM (#27444705)
      Are you kidding, right? Information from IDC WW Quarterly Server Tracker - CY2008 total Unix Servers factory revenue:
      IBM: $6 387 mln.
      HP: $4 561 mln.
      Apple: $99 mln.

      Sorry, but Apple can't be classified as "major unix competitor".
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        The key terminology there is "Servers". Apple does not make much revenue on their server division and does not have many sales. Because each of their computers is Unix, Apple outsells IBM and HP in numbers of Unix machines sold. From the 1Q 2009 results [apple.com] "Apple sold 2,524,000 Macintosh computers during the quarter". The difference is Apple makes money on Unix servers, workstations, desktops, and laptops. IBM now only sells servers and workstations.
      • by ThrowAwaySociety ( 1351793 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @12:46PM (#27448171)

        IBM Unix Servers: 6.387b
        IBM Unix Desktops: Essentially 0
        HP Unix Servers: 4.561b
        HP Unix Destkops: Essentially 0

        Apple Unix Servers: 0.099b
        Apple Unix Desktops: 14.27b (FY 2008)

        In other words, Apple makes TWICE as much money selling Unix-based systems as IBM.

  • by idontgno ( 624372 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:45AM (#27444043) Journal
    I remember rockin' coffee machines in the break rooms of their education centers. It's no mystery their most successful product is named "Java".
  • Do Not Want (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn@@@gmail...com> on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:46AM (#27444055) Journal

    ... I.B.M. into the dominant supplier of high-profit Unix servers ...

    Oh, how pleasent, what a smart move for IBM.

    ... and related technology.

    Woh. Hold on. Wait. Please, I beg of you, save Sun's software from IBM's slow moving process and lack of usability.

    I must confess that while I have used Solaris, the only thing I have ever cared about from Sun enough to bitch is Java and Java related thingies. Now, I'm not saying that this is going to fall apart if/when it transfers to IBM's hands and I certainly hope that the people involved in those projects stay there but if I look at the products of the two companies I must say that Sun is far better at Software.

    This hasn't always been the case but let's look at web application servers. The free open source Glassfish [java.net] container has been one of my favorites for development. Websphere [ibm.com], on the extreme other side of the spectrum, was the bane of my existence for a very short time in my life causing me to lose sleep night after night. I would take Weblogic, Tomcat, Resin, anything over Websphere. Please, baby Jesus, if you can hear me do not let this happens and if it does, let Glassfish be the source code they stick with moving forward.

    Although I'm sure you'd love to hear me bitch for hours about Rational products, I'm just going to say that I think competition is healthy and also I prefer Sun Software to remain Sun Software. I hope this deal falls apart. I've loved IBM's tutorials but do not care for their software.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      Woh. Hold on. Wait. Please, I beg of you, save Sun's software from IBM's slow moving process and lack of usability.

      I must confess that while I have used Solaris, the only thing I have ever cared about from Sun enough to bitch is Java and Java related thingies.

      I think you have just proved that Java is a fluke. Solaris is... well, it's Solaris. What more need be said?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        virtualbox? OpenOffice? They do seem to have a few decent devs there...
      • Re:Do Not Want (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rve ( 4436 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:08AM (#27444357)

        I think you have just proved that Java is a fluke. Solaris is... well, it's Solaris. What more need be said?

        What more need be said? Well, please elaborate. What exactly is wrong with Solaris, according to you? What exactly is it lacking that other unixes do offer? What is lacking about the many features that other unixes simply do not have? Even an open source version is made available.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

          Even an open source version is made available.

          OpenSolaris is a last-ditch effort to remain relevant in the face of Linux [zdnet.com].

          Solaris is doomed to fail because Sun made it unnecessarily baroque. Speaking as someone who cut their Sun teeth on SunOS 4.1.1 on sun3 (now is your cue, crusty Unix overlords, to come and tell me you started with sun2) I can conclusively say that while SunOS has come a long way it has also become continually more of a PITA. If it's so fucking great, why is Linux eating its lunch? Maybe ZFS and dtrace just aren't enough?

      • Re:Do Not Want (Score:4, Insightful)

        by chill ( 34294 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:38AM (#27444877) Journal

        What more need be said? How about "at least it isn't AIX". Or, better yet, "Thank GOD it isn't that abomination known as HP-UX aka H-PHUX aka Unix-on-Crack".

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

          Well, having worked more than I ever wanted to with HP-SUX and almost not at all with AIX I guess that's a moderately valid argument. On the other hand, the only HP-SUX customers any more are those who can't find an upgrade path out of that hellhole (I've formerly discussed the 8-way itanic server at a certain community college, where I had to make it interoperate IPSEC with Windows - hint: examples in HP's documentation are backwards. Either the person who made the HP-SUX IPSEC tools or the person who wrot

    • Re:Do Not Want (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:56AM (#27444187)

      I must say that Sun is far better at Software.

      One word : javac

      IBM's java compiler and IDE (Eclipse) are way better than Sun's....
      Granted there are good things on both sides, IBM's javac is twice faster than Sun's.

      What I hope from this transfer is:
      - Merge of IBM and Sun code for reference java implementation
      - MySQL forks cleanup, and kept as entry level DBMS
      - Sun's HW products going to trash...

      What I don't get is, what can IBM win from this deal ? Apart from the Java Brand....

      • Re:Do Not Want (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:08AM (#27444371)

        I think there are a lot of developers that would argue as of Netbeans 6 and on that Sun actually has the better offering in the IDE department.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Mark Round ( 211258 )

        - Sun's HW products going to trash...

        While I may agree with you when it comes to Sun's generic x86 boxes (although they have some really nice engineering) and most of their StorageTek arrays, it would be a tragedy if Sun's Niagara boxes (T-series coolthreads processors) and storage servers (X4500 and 7000 "Amber Road" series) died. Those are truly innovative and unique products, and there is no equivalent out there from any manufacturer.

        There's also some great software that Sun have developed, and it would

  • by wiresquire ( 457486 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:47AM (#27444075) Journal

    Sun somehow managed to butcher so many of its acquisitions, that it would be interesting to see what would be the outcome of IBM buying Sun. OpenOffice vs Symphony, DB2 vs MySQL, WebSphere vs Sun's offerings, Solaris vs AIX, and not to mention the hardware side.

    If it goes ahead, of course....

    ws

  • by RancidPickle ( 160946 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:49AM (#27444103) Homepage

    IBM today announced the outsourcing of 90% of Sun employees. "This will save us a good chunk of the $7B we paid for them," said an IBM representative.

    Meanwhile, in Washington, IBM was approved to receive $3B in taxpayer money from the Keep America Working fund.

    • by Anonymous Meoward ( 665631 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:01AM (#27445191)

      If only this wasn't true.

      I know folks in IBM (used to work there long ago myself), and who have just been pushed out. Those who left think they're the lucky ones. The remaining American workforce is stressed out over heavy workloads and fear of the impending (inevitable?) axe. Morale is slightly better there today than it was inside Dachau in 1943.

      And yes, CEO Sam Palmisano has been lobbying Barack Obama personally to get some of the stimulus package. So your U.S. tax dollars will go to accelerate offshore outsourcing.

      I pity Sun employees. I really do. They are about to become part of a company that is, undeniably, bad for America. (And they won't be staying long either.)

    • by FiveTenMatt ( 943867 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:25AM (#27445691)
      On top of outsourcing Sun employees, I think one of the big money savers for IBM was laying off approximately 5000 of their own employees just a few months ago. I guess they needed the cash to buy Sun, so they could outsource Sun's employees to save more cash... This hardly seems like good corporate policies in our current economic climate. I just don't see how average Americans tolerate companies who fire 5000 of their own (American) employees to raise enough cash to buy another company to increase their stock margins. Isn't this the sort of business policy that got us into this recession?
  • by Capt James McCarthy ( 860294 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:53AM (#27444163) Journal

    What market SUN has which is still substantial in certain arenas. Then there is Java, MySQL, and many other products which has been clearly covered. But I think getting their hands on ZFS and dtrace will be big. With ZFS IBM can build cheaper versions of NetApps Filers. Did I use cheap and IBM in the same sentence?

    Hopefully IBM will still push out OpenSolaris along with Trusted Solaris. I wonder if this means the sparc processor is done and Solaris will be migrated to the IBM's RISC. What of AIX then? I don't see IBM maintaining two operating systems long term.

    "RISC is going to change everything."

  • by alta ( 1263 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:55AM (#27444181) Homepage Journal

    There's a number of decent forks of MySQL out there, time to look at them. People, list all of the forks you can think of here, I'll start with drizzle https://launchpad.net/drizzle [launchpad.net]

    Drizzle's no good for me, I want those advanced features.

  • by GPLDAN ( 732269 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @08:55AM (#27444183)
    I built a dial-up ISP in a major metro city with five Sparc 4s, and a Sparc Classic. Several Bay Terminal Servers and a crate full of USR Robotics Speedsters to attach to the octopus serial cables.

    Upstream was a Cisco 2500 running two T1s, bonded with that new cool PPP protocol.

    Over 650 shell accounts, usually 500 going at a time. A Special variant of SunOS 4.1.3 and access to tin, trn, pine and even... lynx!

    Those Suns never took a break, never died and were solid, despite being located in a colo facility that alternated between being 100 degrees, and being 40 degrees. (Don't ask). Had a mind blowing $7,000/mo of revenue coming in the door to pay three people and keep the lights on the worlds crappiest office.

    Good times.
  • Wow, what a deal (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:04AM (#27444301)

    I was reading about this earlier in the week, and remembering when IBM and Sun were arch-rivals in the high-end Unix market. I'm guessing IBM's going to kill AIX and maybe even the p-series servers now.

    My question is, does IBM want Solaris, the hardware business, Java, or do they just want to get rid of a competitor?

    Every IBM product I've seen in the past few years has had its user interface written in Java. Every piece of middleware they write now is Java. So it seems like they just want to consolidate the market.

    That said, they got a good deal in this market, but what a lousy time to do this. How many thousands of employees on both the IBM and Sun side are going to get kicked out over this? I guess it all depends on how many products this kills. Worse still, IBM hasn't been known to be keen on keeping jobs in the US and Europe lately...

  • by malchus6 ( 870609 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:05AM (#27444319)
    wow that's one hot piece of real estate.... (sorry)
  • by skulcap ( 184906 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:06AM (#27444331)

    Our Sun sales rep has already reported that 75% of the sales force has been let go - which may not be a bad thing... Sun couldn't sell/market themselves out of a wet paper bag.

    I have the utmost respect for a large part of their technology portfolio... and they really do (or at least seem to) try hard, but in the last 5 years support, sales, and things in general with them have just degraded.

  • by Jerry ( 6400 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:09AM (#27444381)

    Will IBM drop their support for Linux and switch to Solaris and OpenSolaris for their hardware? They won't if they want to continue to receive the support of the FOSS community, which they have been enjoying for some time now, otherwise they will be seen as exploiters, like so many who use the FOSS community during their beta period but take their product proprietary. Are you reading this Skype? Get that 4.0 Linux version out NOW!

    Will IBM release ClassPath under the GPL2, making Java ENTIRELY GPL? They will if they want Java to remain competitive to .NET and expand.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mdm-adph ( 1030332 )

      Aye, I know what you mean. I've been especially liking their sudden support of Ubuntu in that past year or so. I've almost moved my entire dev environment over to it, and I'd like to continue to be able to appreciate the support.

  • by javacowboy ( 222023 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:11AM (#27444433)

    Last time I checked, Red Hat was selling a version of Linux, and so was Novell. They make quite a tidy profit from their Linux business.

    Much of Linux's success is due to its community of contributors, but that community also includes corporations.

  • by wytten ( 163159 ) <.wytten. .at. .cs.umn.edu.> on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:15AM (#27444491)

    Back in college in the 1980's I administered a cluster of Sun2's with 160MB rack mounted hard drives. You could define those days as when a "hard drive" would kill you if dropped on your head from a height of 3 feet.

  • by VampireByte ( 447578 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:21AM (#27444575) Homepage

    The article mentions "I.B.M. could also undercut Oracle by more actively promoting the free MySQL software" but bring up IBM's DB2. Isn't this the more interesting question? Won't there be fear of IBM cannibilizing DB2 with "free" MySQL? Will IBM try to bury (or join the ranks of those who disparage) MySQL so that it doesn't endanger DB2?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 0racle ( 667029 )
      Honestly, I don't see how you can hold MySQL in the same arena as DB2 and Oracle. MySQL is no threat to DB2.
  • by Amazing Quantum Man ( 458715 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:30AM (#27444753) Homepage

    Alpha Centauri, followed by Betelgeuse.

  • by KenSeymour ( 81018 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:37AM (#27444861)

    I started using Sun Workstations back when they had the Motorola based Sun-3's. Later,
    when they came out with Sparc based Sun-4's, I learned just how portable software written
    in C is. I used to take a buffer of data read in from the network or serial port, cast to a char*,
    bump along the buffer, then cast to an int* to get some piece of a network header.
    On Sparc architecture, you can't de-reference a pointer to an int if the address is not divisible
    by 4. So you have to do a byte copy into memory properly aligned for 4 byte data.

    In those days, if you wanted spreadsheet software that ran on Unix, it cost about $1000. Most
    software for Unix workstations cost much more than the same sort of thing for Windows. The
    rationalization for this was a Unix machine could support way more users so they had to charge more.I used to think that Unix software vendors were responsible for the success of Windows.

  • by $1uck ( 710826 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:38AM (#27444867)
    IBM and SUN operate too much of the same space... the merger doesn't do anything other than mean the elimination of too man products that all compete. netbeans/eclipse Glassfish/WSAD Solaris/AIX Plus they both compete in the hardware market. In the long run this just means less competition in a market that I actually care about. If some other tech company (like google) that had orthogonal interests bought the company that would be a win.
  • by alispguru ( 72689 ) <bob.bane@ m e . c om> on Friday April 03, 2009 @09:44AM (#27444971) Journal

    If

              The Computer is the Network

    and

              The Network is Down

    then

              It's Time to Take the Rest of the Day Off

  • HPUX? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by John Betonschaar ( 178617 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:01AM (#27445193)

    If the deal goes through, only IBM, HP, and Fujitsu will be left as major competitors in the market for commercial Unix.

    Do we really still count HP as 'being in the market' for commercial Unix? Last time I checked HPUX was as dead as a commercial Unix OS can be, and that was 5 years ago. Which wasn't surprising because it's probably the most archaic and outdated OS I've ever used, a real masochist OS.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:09AM (#27445349)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Aceticon ( 140883 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:20AM (#27445587)

    I'm willing to sell them the Moon for $1 Billion or Mars for $1.5 Billion

  • by royler ( 1270778 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:23AM (#27445643)
    i wonder how much the moon will go for... i hope apple doesnt buy it, i like their stuff, but i'm sick of their logo and you know they'd laser it on there.
  • by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday April 03, 2009 @10:24AM (#27445647) Homepage

    Forbes predicts 10,000 layoffs from the merger, most on the Sun side, in "IBM and Sun: There Will Be Blood" [forbes.com].

    Sun had a good run: 27 years. But they lost in workstations, they lost in servers, and Java isn't a big moneymaker.

    This has serious implications for Java. To Sun, Java was their one remaining strong product. For IBM, it's just another software product line. IBM will do a decent job of maintaining it, as they do with all their corporate products. But they may not push it forward.

    IBM also gets MySQL, which might be a problem, since IBM has other competing database offerings.

    Sun's Silicon Valley operations have been shrinking for years. They overbuilt hugely during the dot-com boom, and have far too much office space. There's even an abandoned Sun industrial park in Fremont, where they built the parking lots and the building foundations before stopping construction around 2001.

The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of space and time. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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