Ballmer and McNealy Smiling Together

cahiha writes "Sun and Microsoft are pushing a single sign-on and identity management solution, and the Sun home page has a picture of McNealy and Ballmer smiling together. Yahoo has details on the conflict between the industry giants, and there is more information on the collaboration at the Sun press release page. The press release took place Friday morning." From the article: "The technology news, though, was overshadowed by the joint appearance of McNealy and Ballmer, who until April 2004 were bitter enemies. McNealy once referred to Microsoft's executive team of Ballmer and Bill Gates as 'Beavis and Butthead.'"

Comments

Why is this headline news?

[QuietLagoon]

Sun is on the verge of becoming irrelevant (if they haven't done so already). Their marketshare is declining almost as rapidly as their stock price. McNealy is looking around for a life boat, and he thinks he has found one in Microsoft.

Microsoft, on the other hand, needs to look more "open" and more "willing to play nicely with competitors". What better way than to find a half-dead ex-competitor, one that won't pose any serious challenge, and start cooperating with them. Maybe this will appease those EU anti-trust people.

I thought Passport was dead

[Nova Express]

Is it just me, or does "a single sign-on and identity management solution" sound an awful lot like Passport? I was under the impression that once eBay told them to take a hike, the long-shunned Passport was finally going to be given the ignoble burial it deserves.

So in desperation, Sun is reaching for a life preserver made of cast iron.

Of course, this could be an entirely new, unworkable "a single sign-on and identity management solution," that will be just as distrusted and irrelevant as Passport was. People don't even trust Microsoft to handle their e-mail without infecting their machine, much less keeping their "identity" secure.

Being a loyal DEC user

[expro]

This is about what Digital was doing at this point in their death spiral. The pilot hasn't told the passengers the situation... When I die, I want to die in my sleep, like my Grandfather did, and not like the 500 screaming passengers on his plane.

Unified Java?

[nostriluu]

I shudder to say this in many ways, but some good could actually come out of this if Sun and Microsoft could get some cooperation happening on Java (or more generally a unified runtime and API). Sun may be near irrelevant but Java is in many ways the main competitor to Microsoft's broad development platform (is it still called .NET?)

Putting aside the important considerations around free/open software, it could make a lot of people's lives simpler. Its not that Java isn't already rich and cross platform, it would just be a next step in unification and perhaps make development for small devices for example easier.

But due to their contexts, I wouldn't fully trust either company, and especially both, to carry the flag for a unified development environment, just like I'm sure this latest cooperation will yield to some selling out of purely technical or ethical concerns. "Liberty Alliance" (groan) appeared to be much more important than MS' solution, with much more real third party participation, so this is a consolidation that will have repurcussions. The third party opinions and participation of interested parties like geeks is still important to prevent sneaking in designs intended purely for the benefit of MS and Sun, rather than contributing to developments that are generally useful.

Re:Similar Reactions

[astrashe]

I think the divide is between free as in freedom and everyone else.

I've been using linux for a long time, since about '92. (I should be a lot better at it than I am -- I'm not claiming any kind of geek mastery over it.)

And for almost all of that time it's been about the software and not the license. I always thought the free software fanatics were, well, fanatics. Ideologues.

I don't think that any more. In the end, the only software that's perfectly alined with its users' interests is open source.

It's usually not described in these terms, but defining characteristic of open source is that the owners or creators have given away their ability to control how people use the software.

Out of the big guys in silicon valley, gates is probably one of the better ones. Personally, I'd rather hang out with him than with Jobs. I always imagine Jobs sitting in a chair with disciples gathered around his feet. Ellison must be a nightmare.

Gates is the worst only because he's the biggest and most powerful. If Jobs was the biggest and most powerful, he'd be the worst.

I used to run a business on sparc servers. I like Sun and their technology. But Sun is looking out for Sun, and they always will, and if it's in their interests to throw me under the train, they will.

Debian *can't* throw me under the train. They've signed away all the rights they'd need to be able to do it.

It's not about whether or not the guys at the top are good or bad. It's that they're in roles that simply shouldn't exist. That's the problem with google's ambitious plans. The guys who run google are great -- they probably go out on sunday's and wash the feet of the poor. But they're amassing a lot of power over information, and the mass itself isn't a good thing.