Sun Microsystems, SuSE Link Up To Sell Linux

ChilyWily writes "Reuters is reporting that Sun Microsystems Inc. has agreed to resell and support closely held German software firm SuSE's version of the Linux operating system, the leading variant in Europe, the companies said on Friday. This agreement follows a similar one in May between Sun and Red Hat Inc. While I'm happy to see Sun's finally beginning to warm up to Linux (aka if you can't beat 'em, join 'em strategy) I wonder if this is too late for Sun?"

Comments

Re:Um No

[Znork]

If they have any separate licensing necessary for Linux then they may not distribute Linux. The GPL prevents distributing GPL code together with code that is licensed under terms not compatible with the GPL.

SCO can try to license their alleged 80 lines in whatever way they want. The problem is you just are not allowed to distribute the other millions of lines together with those 80 lines in any case. Which means any license to do so is worthless.

Solaris 10

[dodell]

Well, I've got Solaris 10 alpha test CDs. Solaris 10 is coming out and has some killer features. I don't think this is an "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" situation at all. Sun has spent years developing and marketing Solaris/SunOS, and I don't think they'll stop here. It's very profitable for them to sell a true UNIX OS.

I imagine it's also just as profitable for them to do support/development for Linux. And I think that they're expanding, not downsizing or rethinking an entire business model.

Re:it never too late

[Kenja]

Your right, why run on a platform that scales to 128+ CPUs with 16megs of cache per CPU when you can run on a consumer platform that cant scale higher then 4 CPUs and has poor IO?

Have you ever realy used Sparc systems? The things are tanks, no matter what sort of work load I throw at them they just don't stop. On a single task a PC will be faster, however under heavy load the PC just falls apart.