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Sun and Microsoft Make Nice
DrLudicrous writes "Sun Microsystems and Microsoft have reached some kind of settlement (NYTimes, registration required) with regards to patent issues and Sun's antitrust suit against Microsoft. Microsoft is apparently going to pay Sun about 1.6 billion US dollars, join into a ten-year pact of cooperation, and resolve a set of patent disputes. This has been in the works for about a year, starting as a series of phone calls between Scott McNealy and Steve Ballmer. You can also catch the story here." update oh well, it's a duplicate. Nothing else interesting happening today :)
I hope Microsoft doesn't apply any pressure on Sun to get rid of Java or screw it up. They're probably acutely aware that this money will make it easier for them to destroy the highly portable and competitive language. It's a veritable C# killer!
I watched the video of Ballmer and McNealy boasting about their new patent regime.
I wonder what open source project will suffer first as they enforce these patents? Mono? JBoss?
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writing at JDJ's online site, McNealy said he was pressured to try glasnost by his customers, who have mixed environments and wanted the companies to "stop the noise" and "get it together." Ballmer said there was "nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing" in the agreement, which was barely sketched, that "would not delight" both sets of customers.
This agreement recognizes that cutting edge R&D and intellectual property protection are the foundation for the growth and success of our industry.
This can be read: "MS loves SCO's thinking."
Microsoft could have just waited Sun out.
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This is kind of scary. We all know that Sun's relationship with Linux is somewhat schizophrenic. Over the last month or two they've been fairly reasonable (Opteron-based servers and decent Linux support) but we all know that McNealy the Big Mouth Bass still thinks that Solaris is the way to go. He still thinks Sun can "win" in the marketplace with SPARC and Solaris, beating out commodity stuff in even the small installations where SPARC and Solaris don't have an advantage.
If McNealy thinks that getting in bed with Microsoft is going to give Sun a leg up over Linux, then there are going to be some very annoying times ahead.
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In the corporate/business world even when companies are partnering up, they are still always under consideration to be a competitor.
They are going up fight in the sales trenches just as they were before. Only difference would be the CEOs talking less trash.
Just being curious, but couldn't Sun's refusal to open source Java be a part of this Sun-MS agreement?
Getting rid of an open sourced Java opponent is i.m.h.o. more valuable to MS than the 1.6 G$ settlement fee.
Just my 0.02 $....
They can do what they like, patent-wise, but they can't kill Linux. The genie is out of the bottle. The Chinese, the Indians, the Russians, and the rest of the world (with the possible exception of the EU) will never bend over for any wacky patent or copyright claims from McNealy and Gates.
I can see the Chinese giggling right now. They've been copying MS disks for years and distributing them for free, despite government lip service RE shutting the counterfeiters down. Now the West is going to step on its own dick by restricting intellectual ideas? Great, say the Chinese, let us know how else we can eat your lunch, you stupid motherfuckers.
Linux development will continue unchecked. If Linux is stopped in the US and EU, so what. The rest of the world will continue merrily on. So fuck you, Bill, and fuck you, Scott. Enjoy the cash while you can, because the end of the story is being written, and you won't make it to the last chapter.
We already know that Sun and Microsoft are scared out of their wits by Linux, so the settlement between is not a surprise, particularly if we
.NEt seems to be winning the battle for mind-share already. Real shame as I happen to like Java and believe that it could really make a huge difference to our computing if it was in a better steward's hands, those of the open source community.
,20276755,00.htm
consider that both Sun and Microsoft are SCO supporters, I mean, licensees.
The real news is that SUN is bleeding money incessantly. If you read their published quarterly results and know a bit about accounting, you will realize that rather than use the settlement money as a one-time payment to offset current losses, they plan to spread it out over a number of quarters to pad future potential loses. This shows that Sun has very little faith in its own future.
From a cnet.com article on the same subject:
"For its fiscal third quarter, which ended Sunday, Sun expects revenue of $2.65 billion and a net loss of $710 million to $810 million, or 23
cents to 25 cents per share. The loss includes charges of about $350 million for an increase in the valuation allowance for deferred tax assets and about $200 million to restructure its work force and real estate, Sun said.
Excluding the charges, the loss would have been $200 million to $260 million, or 6 to 8 cents per share. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Thompson First Call was less pessimistic: a loss of 3 cents per share on revenue of $2.85 billion.
The company says it has more than 35,000 employees worldwide, so the layoffs account for about 9 percent of its work force. The job cuts will affect all divisions and geographic areas, McGowan said. The majority of cuts will take place by the end of September, he added. Sun already had cut 8,500 employees in two major layoffs in 2001 and 2002."
I give Sun about 5 more years before it's bought out. Only saving grace would be if everyone got fiberoptic lines to their homes in the next few
years and they could rent you app space in their sun-rays servers for a few dollars a month. Somehow I don't see that happening...
And Java won't save them unless they turn it into the defacto language for desktop apps, which just isn't likely to happen.
For further reference on the Sun-SCO relationship, read this piece by David Berlind.
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/m ai n/Could_Sun_hold_...
For SUN's initial SCO FUD, read this among many of the articles that they put out:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/0,20000617 33
It is obvious to anyone that cares to look that Sun is between a rock and a hard place.
The reason they called the Java Desktop System (JDS) by that name is so that they can switch from Linux to Solaris and continue to call it by
the same name, which is what they intend to do.
People really need to understand that Sun ain't no friend of ours. They opensource StarOffice to spite Microsoft and the community around Openoffice has built something that would have taken Sun years with more than 40 supported languages, more than Office, and another 35 in the works. SUN began to offer Linux servers because customers demanded it, simply because they did not want to be tied into a proprietary OS with proprietary hardware.
If SUN's management had some brains, they would focus on hardware, placed their bets on Linux and put Solaris in maintenance mode for those
that really want to run it. I still believe that Solaris is a very good OS for some very limited scenarios, but how will it compare to Linux
one, two, three, four and five years down the road?
On the long haul, Sun will be wasting a ton of resources that they could be using to build services higher-up-the-Linux stack. They could also improve their hardware and face the other real challenge that they are going to have a hard time facing: Inte
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software