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Sun Pondering Buying Novell
Krafty Koder writes "ZDNet are reporting that Sun are considering purchasing Novell and thus gain SUSE Linux.
'With our balance sheet, we're considering all our options,' Sun chief operating officer Jonathan Schwartz said in an interview on Sunday regarding the possibility of acquiring Novell.
'What would owning the operating system on which IBM is dependent be worth? History would suggest we look to Microsoft for comparisons,' he said."
Good-bye Mono.
"What would owning the operating system on which IBM is dependent be worth? History would suggest we look to Microsoft for comparisons," he said.
In other news, Sun still doesn't get it.
Schwartz is retarded. I doubt IBM would let themselves be dependent on Sun in the same way they were dependent on Microsoft in the 80s. If Sun bought Novell to get Suse to have leverage on IBM, IBM could just switch to another distro, or roll their own, or whatever. That's the whole freaking point behind IBM moving from proprietary Unix to Linux on the server.
... against the continual chorus of /.-ers who
say that sun is dead. If they own a major linux distro, then surely slashdot posters cannot be all doom and gloom about this company that (a) commercialized bsd linux (b) lead innovation in all areas of computing: clustering, high availability, chip fab, OS, compilers, etc., (c) fscking invented one of the most popular computer languages ever, (d) is known for considerable charitable works, the community-oriented nature of its work force, and for being a responsible corporate citizen. Maybe, just maybe, owning a linux distro would stop the slashdot "sun is dead/dying" festival.
/. will continue to wallow in 14-year-old flame fests.
What the hell was I thinking? Of course
I find it ironic that IBM invested $50 million in Novell so they could outbid Sun, and now Sun are looking to buy Novell..
Also, I'm worried about the rate at which tech corporations are swallowing up other companies... We seem to have lost many medium sized companies (suse, ximian, etc) as well as some huge ones (compaq).
mind enough about Linux, now they want to own a company devoted to Linux, then tommorrow they will probably want to sell it. The other funny part is they very rarely mention that the Java desktop or their new desktop runs on Linux.
Kosh: "Understanding is a 3 edged sword, your side, their side, the Truth."
Sun has 2 billion in cash and Novell is priced at 3 billion. Looks risky burning your cash reserves. I'm not sure Novell provides the "synergy" that could sparc a Sun revival.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
'What would owning the operating system on which IBM is dependent be worth? History would suggest we look to Microsoft for comparisons,'
Translation: "Look Wall Street and market analysts, we're going to soon own something of value, as far as you know! Please change your rating of us from "Wipe your ass with the stock certificates" to "Eh, keep em around, you never know"!
If Sun makes this move, it could be the worst mistake they've ever made. First off, they do not seem to grasp the nature of the Linux desktop, or any desktop for that matter. Second off, they seem to have this idea that IBM *needs* Novell, when in fact it is the other way around. If Sun comes in, and tries to pull a Microsoft-like bullying technique, I have a strong feeling that IBM will be pulling the plug and switching to another distribution, such as Red Hat, Mandrake, or even developing its own distribution. Sun has not woken up to the new marget reality, and their revenue shortfalls show that. Sun, don't make a billion dollar mistake, just say "no" to aquiring Novell.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
.... Microsoft's hand in this? (Remember the $2b?) Probably MS has confidence - that Sun will not fall short of burying itself along with Novell, Linux and Ximian. That gets rid of the competition to Windows on the Server and desktop both. Much like what happened with Crapaq buying DEC and then HP buying both to kill the Alpha and use it's bones for Itanium - Thus paving the way for Intel to succeed in 64 bit market?! It's another story that AMD hit the right chord as far as 64bit market goes, and that too without any of this politics.
Umm.. Why nobody does not talk about Mono. Sun's biggest strenght is Java. And right now it is being under thread by Mono. So they wan't to buy Novell to get rid of Mono. If so, let's hope Mono community is as strong as Mozilla community.
I wonder if this will happen. I can't help thinking it would be an interesting move for Sun. Mono represents at least a moderate threat to Java/J2EE on non-windows platforms and is sponsored by Novell so Sun could be thinking of trying to bury that and would acquire a good corporate Linux distro in the process rather than trying to build up their own (which is not all that easy). I suspect, though, that they're trying to hold MONO back with a nice bit of FUD of their own.
/. I'm a moderate fan of the company. They've been pretty generous in terms of open source donations (Tomcat, which rocks, and Open Office, which is kind of dull but works spring to mind). I also admire them for trying to do something different where they don't feel (rightly or wrongly) that open source is an option. In the case of Java the source code is available for download, the bug parade is available for public review, and the JCP allows individuals as well as corporates to have an influence on the direction Java/J2EE heads in (and its perfectly possible to fix bugs in the Java source code and have them rolled in to the release - I know because I've done it), I find it hard to imagine IBM or Microsoft or many other proprietary vendors, being so open with their code. (ducks for cover)
Despite the regular bashing that Sun gets on
Wasn't too long ago I heard of some green handshake between two companies.
(puts on tin foil hat)
Will SuSE disappear like Corel Linux only to reappear as something new later on, or vanish completely?
It seems like whenever a certain Linux distro becomes too "well known" something happens to it.
I smell M$. Flame away, but this smells fishy.
They have to buy SCO in order to do that!
IBM has made a consious desision not to have a distro of their own. They depend on commercial distros to provide the platform that runs their hardware and software.
IBM is deeply in bed with both RedHat and SUSE. As with any multi-vendor deal, IBM plays them off each other to make sure neither demand too much.
A hostile SUSE wouldn't be the end of the world, but it would cost IBM significant money and (more importantly) time.
OTOH. Jonathan Schwartz's comment compareing the situation to Microsoft explains a lot about why Sun has pissed away its market position. Their officers are obviously delusional.
SUNW just woke up to the fact that their deals with SCOX didn't mean anything because Novell still owns all of the collateral, including the right to tell SCOX to stifle itself.
If SUNW were to buy Novell, the thinking must go, they could reverse Novell's order telling SCOX to leave IBM alone. Instead, they could harass IBM over AIX, which is a direct competitor to SUNW's server offerings.
SUNW still doesn't see Linux as a strategic threat. Don't be fooled into thinking that our interests are what drive them.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Man, Sun is pissing me off. They have ZERO direction. One day everything is SunONE, then everything is Java desktop.
In four quarters, my Sun Reps when from pushing Solaris Sparc, to Solaris x86, to Linux x86-32, to Linux x86-64. They have no credability. I just can't wait for them to ditch Sparc and Solaris completely. But then they'd have to compete with IBM, Dell, Redhat, and HP. OUCH! So much for high profit margins.
I've really liked where Novell has started taking suse, ximian, and netware, so I'll be pretty sad if sun does buy them...
Hopefully, the improvements that novell had been making with suse, ximian, and netware will never see the Sun.
Er... hm.
Someone should call up Sun and let them know they can download the sourcecode for Linux --- For FREE!
They probably have all that Microsoft money burning a hole in their pocket...
Chip H.
Ideology aside .NET is likely here to stay simply because of MS's market penetration, never mind that is actually happens to be (IMHO) pretty good.
Having a non-MS implementation that allows .NET applications to run on either MS or non-MS platforms is potentially the holy grail of Linux adoption. If more and more apps Just Worked on Windows or Linux, why keep paying the MS tax? (I'm talking average user here, not people who know enough to use things like WINE)
But herein lies the problem. Platform independence was always the claim/goal of Java. One it has had mixed results in achieving. MS's dirty pool with the JRE is certainly a big reason for its less than stellar success on Windows.
Sun hates .NET. .NET could become what they wanted Java to be... IF projects like Mono are successful. So, what would they likely do? Kill it in the name of Java.
Granted Mono is GPL'd, so they couldn't kill it entirely. But taking funding away from Miguel de Icaza and his team would certainly slow its progress dramatically. I'd hate to see that.
Blockwars: free, realtime, multiplayer game similar to Tetris.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Unless you're in the U.K., where the convention is as written. They tend to refer to companies as collective nouns.
The U.S. (and its standards of English) are not the world.
Yea, thats right... The only reason the Linux desktop even has an office suite that is business ready is because of Sun. Open Office is a key to linux being on the desktop and yet people always seem to forget who gave it to us. Not to mention they also came out with that wonderful little language known as java and fully support it on Linux. Java is going to be a key in the desktop migration, well java and .net. But being able to develop on one platform and know it will run on another without modification is an amazing thing when developing. Sun has been very nice to the OSS community and often donates large sums of money to various projects. Not to mention the whole Project Looking Glass thing. When Looking Glass is released, it will show some real competition with Longhorn and Mac on the desktop.
Regards,
Steve
I'm reading the comments on this story and I'm just amazed at how many comments are so hostile to Sun - I just dont understand where this hostility comes from. Sure I can understand people being critical of Sun, and criticicism is good, but this outright hatred is just weird.
Now, I'm a (recent) Sun employee[2], so maybe I'm blinded by my paycheck, but it seems to me that to consider a company that:
as being a reasonable pariah for the Linux community is just strange.
So Sun still push Solaris over Linux, well why wouldnt Sun? Sun have spent a long time working on it, the people at Sun are proud of Solaris. Surely they have as much right to be proud of their (their, cause I havnt contributed to Solaris) work as the "Linux" developers[1] have to be of theirs? And even so, Sun still do spend money on technologies that are of benefit to Unix in general, be it Solaris, Linux, BSD, whatever.. and spend money marketing what is effectively Linux.
So Sun bought out licence rights from SCO, how evil of them, but if you're responsible for Sun and you have a chance to fully secure your "IP" (yuk) rights wouldn't it be corporate irresponsibility to not do so? Remember, you can be sued by shareholders for your inactions as much as your actions.
So Sun settled a long-running dispute with MS, how evil of them. But MS infringed on Suns' rights, is Sun not allowed to get a fat cheque from MS for MSs' wrongdoing, should Sun instead have continued litigating the matter at great expense and uncertainty? Would Sun maybe then later being awarded a fat cheque from MS by court order have then *not* been evil? The settlement recompenses Sun for wrong done to it and lets Sun get on with things, why is that evil?
At the end of the day, Sun are a Unix company. Sun are not perfect, no entity is, and Sun will have to adapt to changing market conditions, as all companies do, but they're the only big company who are and have been 100% committed to Unix from day one of their existence. Sure, Sun would prefer to sell you Solaris, and why not, Solaris is still Unix, and work on any one Unix ultimately benefits all unixes, be it directly or by virtue of competition. Never mind that Sun also directly contribute to technologies/projects that are key to Linux, as well as many other cross-platform projects, and also market Linux in one segment of the market.
The irony of course is that most of these /. weenies who like to spout this ill-informed "Sun is evil, they hate Linux!!!" clap-trap are likely doing so from the "comfort" of their Win32 PCs.
Linux, Solaris, BSD, etc.. So what, they're all Unix. Unix in part draws it's strength and health from diversity, from not being a heterogenous meritocracy, not a homogenous monopoly. Sun has long been a valuable contributor to that meritocracy of ideas.
Vive la difference!
1. What is a Linux developer exactly, aside from Linux kernel developers? I work on stuff at Sun that runs on Linux and Solaris. It's all Unix to me..
2. NB: I do not speak for Sun, opinions in this post are my own. Statemen
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.