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Sun In Talks To Be Acquired By IBM
gandhi_2 writes "Sun Microsystems soared in European trading after a report that it was in talks to be acquired by IBM.
The Wall Street Journal, quoting "people familiar with the matter," reported Wednesday that International Business Machines was in talks to buy the company for at least $6.5 billion in cash, a premium of more than 100 percent over the company's closing share price Tuesday. Officials of Sun and IBM could not immediately be reached for comment."
Because they want to carry some extra goodwill on their books before they eventually have to write it down?
I'd sell in a heartbeat. In this economy, there's no guarantee anything will go well for a specific company. 100% markup on their stock? Even if they do make it through this downturn, no guarantee their stock will hit that level again anytime soon.
Now, if only the US gov't will allow it. IBM+Sun would be a huge company.
-SaNo
So, can I finally get a 20' container with IBM servers in it?
are that this is probably the best that Sun can do but I have to say that the reduction in competition in that space would be concerning.
I've been wondering for a while what Sun was going to do, let's be brutally frank, they were never going to get rich from Java or MySQL, especially as open source, but had little choice in keeping them closed source. I just hope IBM keeps Java, Open Office and the rest as they are and doesn't start to try to make money off them.
What would happen to Solaris, GlassFish, NetBeans, etc?
The NetBeans/GlassFish combo is a killer combination for developing Java EE/J2EE applications. I would hate to see those two products disappear, since they compete directly with Eclipse and Websphere from IBM.
Expert Java EE Consulting
Interesting move as I thought IBMs long term strategy was to move away from the hardware market altogether. I wonder what their intentions are with Suns hardware divisions.
...together at last!
He's been unable to stop Sun's decline since he got the job, but if he can sell the carcass for double its current market cap, he's a far better salesman than I've given him credit for.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Sun's suffering, no longer really actively competing with anything. It would be a good thing for them to do and at $6.5B, it should be a no-brainer.
While Sun has finally come around on open source. They still seem to do it with trepidation and even hamper some of their own works. If IBM purchases them, hopefully that will change. I would love to see them take the cuffs off of Java, OpenSolaris, MySQL, and zfs. By cuffs, I mean different things about different projects. (licensing, open up development, etc)
There's good synergy here. There will be some costs of restructuring as you merge the companies, including some customers who leave because they miss the "old" way of doing things.
Whether it's worth 6.5B in the short term I can't say, but if you look at it long-term, it's a good blend.
Personally, I would've offered a "cash or stock" option, with the IBM stock at a 5-10% discount over recent market lows, to encourage existing shareholders to remain owners of the combined company.
Disclaimer: I used to work for IBM and still own a small amount of stock.
I always thought they would end up being bought by Fujitsu before anyone else. I figure the 100% premium for their stock is :
... the talks are not yet final, and IBM is neither stupid, or in the mood to spend money it doesn't have to.
a) a jumping-off point for talks
b) because the value of Sun's stock has more to do with their earnings than with the value of their IP, which is likely what IBM is really after.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Netbeans is now easily 10 times better than the bloated corpse that is Eclipse. If this goes through they should kill Eclipse. At the very least they better not kill off NetBeans.
I'm normally against mergers but I think this is one move that actually helps both, where synergies do apply.
This is my sig.
Why nobody though about that before?
1- Buy Sun
2- License ZFS under GPLv2
3- Sell Sun
4- Done
BM&S ????
It came to me when I was in the bathroom this morning.
IBM.com that is...
Come on!
Sun has open sourced:
NFS
OpenOffice
GlassFish
Java
Java Enterprise Edition
Netbeans
What has IBM open sourced? Oh...uh...Eclipse
IBM has tons of closed source products:
Websphere
DB2
Rational
Lotus Notes
etc.....
Give me a break!
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I have long thought that Sun would eventually sell to either IBM or Oracle mostly to get control of Java. Wonder if Oracle is even interested?
Think Deeply.
This will be a nightmare for Java and open source in general.
IBM will kill the following fantastic Sun projects:
Netbeans
Glassfish
They won't kill OpenSolaris/zfs/Dtrace, but they'll probably close source enough of it. Same goes with MySql.
They'll scrap all of Sun's awesome documentation and replace it with their own cryptic documentation. They'll re-engineer Sun's products to generate cryptic error messages, like they do with DB2's wonderful error messages.
IBM makes horrible products. I should know, because my last two companies (including this one) have been IBM shops, and I have to use them every day.
Please God don't let this be true!
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They have $3M in cash and $3M in property, so $6.5M isn't actually over-valuing them, the market is under-valuing them if that's a 100% premium over their market cap.
Fujitsu and SUN co-developed/sell the Mx000 series servers. Whichever way SUN goes, I'm pretty sure Fujitsu still has that product line.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Netclipse, the new IDE from Sun Buisness Systems!
I remember about 9 years ago when IBM bought out Sequent Computer Systems . My employer at the time was a Sequent customer and I knew people who worked at Sequent's corporate office. They were at first all gung ho about joining IBM, but the reality that set in wasn't pretty. As often happens in business, a big company buys a competitor simply to shut the competitor down. Click on the Wikipedia link provided to get some more info on the deal and alternative explanations for the decision to close down Sequent. If I worked for Sun, I wouldn't hold my breath that this would be a good deal for me, but the stock holders and upper management at Sun may come out well from this.
I find the big blue room so much nicer when there's a sun in it. Don't you?
"Good news, everyone!"
You know the saying "you can lead a horse to water..."?
This is the same.
"Good news, everyone!"
Most of Sun's sales come from IBM, so buying them is a sensible move.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
IBM is a really negative company from an end-user point of view. If they acquire Sun we can kiss Java goodbye. Before you know it it'll become more complicated to use (they make tons of money off support contracts) and then it'll sit unsupported for 10 years before IBM admits that it's a dead product (OS/2 case in point).
No, I'd much rather see Google acquire Sun if anyone at all.
With luck, this would stop Sun screwing around with OpenOffice.org, and let them do the right: Eclipse-like thing there.
Then again - if IBM's decides to continue Sun's crazy crusade to push Solaris instead of Linux, I guess we'll all be far worse off: but hopefully IBM knows how best to manage death with dignity for legacy operating systems.
I genuinely question the future of Open Office, Netbeans, Java, et al if IBM acquires Sun. I'm not implying there will be a malicious or concerted effort to kill any particular product or anything, it's just IBM. Long before there was a Linux community I was a die-hard OS/2 user (the best single-user OS there ever was) and before that worked years for an IBM dealer. IBM was, is, and always will be a company of brilliant engineers that can't market water in a desert. Continually-shifting reprioritizations, undercutting of third-party support, you name it -- they kill their own products by their own sheer idiocy.
About Java SE (OpenJDK), Java EE (Glassfish), Java ME (PhoneME) and the IDE (Netbeans). All of them are available as GPLv2, so the old-rule "run fast or get forked" will apply :)
;-)
... practically this could become a banana-process.
Glassfish is the Java EE RI, I got doubt WAs can become the RI, so the risk is more on WAS side. Obviously IBM would tint this in DeepBlue and benefit from all the mainframe integration components they got
PhoneMe and Netbeans are more of a problem, because IBM could decide to stop de dev there. But thanks to libre world nothing is stoping the communities to go on.
Two major problems with the merger :
1 - The patents
Sun has clearly stated they will protect anybody (any implementer) under their umbrela. What will be IBM thought on this ? Would they still protect any JCR implementer as well (apache, jboss, etc) ?
IBM shall keep the protection and add their own pattent to the umbrela
2 - JCP place
What will happen to the IBM+Sun seats ? This need to be solved not to endanger independence of the process. With Sun holding a veto vote, and IBM another vote
IBM shall leave their own seats and grap the Sun's lead seat.
If this mergerhappens, this is a huge news for the enterprise IT world.
Let's see how IBM manage this, or "get forked" : Java est libre !
The most important thing is that crucial software such as Java and OpenOffice are maintained. Without a BigCo maintaining these, they will fall behind, which ultimately will make open source a weaker proposition. Nothing would please the Beast of Redmond more. IBM would be a good steward of these programs.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
They'll keep OpenOffice, but make it even less usable than before.
They'll kill Netbeans, or merge it into Eclipse.
They'll kill Glassfish, because it competes with Websphere.
They'll make Java way more complicated, and scrap Sun's excellent documentation and replace it with their cryptic help files system.
They'll slowly close source OpenSolaris, or make that OS less usable.
They obviously don't want MySQL to go anywhere, since it competes with DB2.
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IBM will shut down the European and American operations and send all the work to China.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Just think; they could name the new company SunBM (pronounced sunbeam)
'it'll sit unsupported for 10 years before IBM admits that it's a dead product (OS/2 case in point)'
OS/2 was technologically superior to Windows and would have succeeded if MS hadn't have gone round trashing it in public, while still contracted to develop and support it.
'I was super enthusiast that we shipped OS/2'
OS/2 "Crush" plan
The demos of OS/2 were excellent, crashing the system had the intended effect'
davecb5620@gmail.com
At least we no longer have to fret about Rock - it would have been competing head on with POWER7 anyway, so it's going to get canned.
And we no longer have to worry about Linux making further inroads into the data center - where it only arrived because of IBM's endorsement some 10 years ago; it will be left to the desktop, where HP, Dell and MS can slug it out.
AIX vs. Solaris? DB2 vs. MySQL? This certainly bodes well for IBM's Java offerings and it means they can stop developing their own JRE, if they haven't already. They can also cannibalize Sun's server customers. On the other hand, it seems like this has to mean certain parts of Sun's business die. AIX and Solaris don't both need to exist within the same company. SPARC and POWER don't need to exist within the same company. DB2 and MySQL might, since they target different markets.
Astute insights all
I've been expecting an announcement like this since at least 2002. I was at a recruiting event at Sun back in late 2002 and it was pretty obvious to me then that they had lost their way. They had no killer products or even rumors of such, they'd gone through a number of rounds of "cost cutting" measures (read: layoffs) and they were focused on yesterday's technology or pie-in-the-sky ideas. But, big things have a lot of momentum and can coast for a long time before reality hits. And, for some, reality will only hit when they feel the frigid waters of the north Atlantic.
OK, I've got no special love for Sun, but please God please, do not let them get swallowed up by the IBM bureaucracy.
"New in Java 8! XML-binding database security extension protocol modules for WebSphere integrated at every level of the language, providing automatic clustering, fail-over and performance profiling! To support this feature, a critical part of many customer solutions, writing a Java class will now require an additional 37 configuration files, and if you make a mistake in any one of them, a cryptic error will be thrown at run-time. For security reasons, we can't tell you what the error codes mean. Also, half of java.* and javax.* no longer work according to the specification and javadoc, and XML will now be stored in binary. IBM consultants are available to help you with the transition."
-- 77IM
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
Sure - IBM would be great for OpenOffice - an Eclipse-like foundation would kick-start it's growth.
But the distinction between a mere Servlet container and a full fledged JEE container is getting smaller.
With Spring (MVC,IOC,Webflow...), Hibernate, jBoss jbpm, JSF implementations (jBoss RichFaces, Oracle ADF, ...) I see a tendency for Plain Old Java Objects (POJO's) and clean, powerful 3rd party implementations instead of Big HeavyWeight 'Enterpricy' JEE all or nothing application servers like Websphere...
I can't help but feel that this is ultimately going to be a bad thing for the IT industry, especially with enterprise IT. IMHO there will always be a need for big iron servers: commodity hardware does not necessarily scale well for all applications.
Competition is good for the IT industry. Take away yet another place and your choices are further diminished. Sun have done a lot of good work with SPARC, especially recently. What happens when the only choices in CPU technologies are x86 and PPC?
IBM has contributed a lot to Apache, for example Derby.
Not saying they've done more than Sun, but that's not just a few scraps.
Google "Linux Technology Center" or "IBM Internal Open Source Bazaar" and be educated. IBM just hasn't taken sides in the distro war. Instead of putting distros out there, IBM is kicking a lot of money and code into the Linux kernel and a lot of the core software that makes up your favorite distributions.
IBM probably contributes more code back to the FOSS community than Novell, potentially more than Red Hat.
Quite a few of the "who's who" of the FOSS world work at IBM writing the code that you're now using.
...when Sun bought MySQL? Everyone said it was time to look at PostgreSQL again...but of course no one did.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
You aren't going to "kiss Java goodbye".
IBM is heavily invested in server-side Java stuff. They have entire huge app stacks like Websphere, that are written in Java. IBM pays a lot of programmers to work on *open source* Java technologies like Eclipse. I personally know a few dozen people who work on Java virtual machines for IBM.
Buying Sun does seem like a move that makes sense for IBM, but they would do it to secure the future of Java, not to bury it.
Major Open Source Contributions:
IBM >> Linux, Eclipse
Sun Micro >> Java, OpenOffice, NetBeans, Virtual Box, xVM, Glassfish, OpenSolaris, ZFS, MySQL
I'm sort of nervous and excited at the same time to thing what could happen to these products... Hands down, Sun Micro is one of the largest contributors to OSS - but has limited development in the past.
The IBM buyout could mean a GPL'ed ZFS and OpenSolaris, a complete xVM, and an improved MySQL.... Then again, it just might mean end of life for some things.... We shall see....
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_walks_away_from_yahoo_deal.php
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Except strictly on a balance sheet?
I don't see how it would work out well at all unless Sun somehow stayed a separate entity underneath the IBM umbrella. I don't think the two cultures of the companies would mix at all...I think the hardware product lines of both companies very much overlap one another....and we'd be losing a ton of diversity in the IT marketplace given a lot of things would likely be 'consolidated'.
I can't understand how anyone would want this to happen except possibly shareholders. The day Sun Micro is no longer its own entity will be a very, very sad day for the IT industry in my opinion.
As a current IBMer, mod parent up... IBM is where good products and companies go to die. They have this enormous pool of talented people and excellent products, yet still manage to bury it all under an idiotic, quarterly-results-bottom-line-screw-investment mentality. I've seen small groups in IBM do great things - and then they get noticed, sucked into some larger organization (they're duplicative and we're bigger so we're obviously right!) and any innovation, good ideas, or anything positive at all get swiftly crushed.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
IBM also recently bought Transitive, the leading CPU-soft-emulation company. They produce the Power emulator that Apple ships in every Intel Mac, and also have products to emulate Mainframe on x86 and Sparc on x86 or Power.
I had assumed they bought the company just to kill the Mainframe-on-x86 product, but this could actually provide a reasonable path forward; keep Solaris but migrate it to x86 or Power6.
a little bird told me HP would buy Sun, not IBM. I think HP would make a better fit given the nature of their business.
Oh would I love to be a fly on the wall when Scott meets the board of IBM:
Sam: "Scott, we are cylons, welcome to IBM, come on in here and meet the Boys."
Scott enters with buck-teeth grinning and nervously shaking hands.
Sam: "Come on in, resistance is futile, heh, heh, heh, have a seat, can we get you some coffee or a hot secretary with a danish?"
Sam pushes button, windows begin to black out, screen descends from the ceiling, lights lower and first two bars of Battlestar Galactica theme begins to play over and over again.
Sam: "Let us review."
Battlestar Galactica theme continues past first two bars as announcer says "previously on Battlestar": a video of Scott at just about EVERY Sun or COMDEX user's conference in the 80s and 90s on stage viciously blasting IBM and Microsoft. Video of Scott and leisure suit Larry (Ellison) together onstage at various trade presentations in 80s and 90s blasting IBM and Microsoft. Clip of Scott's mom blasting IBM and Microsoft. Video of Scott touting "the network is the system" and "dot in dot com" and "network computing". Battlestar Galactica theme climaxes, 2009 is displayed on black screen and a single kettle drum beat smashes and rolls, Carmina Burana begins playing and lights come on as a team of white coated doctors and nurses enter the room and approach Scott.
These splits are adjusted in the graphs. They note the split, but the if the price shown on the day before the split was $100, that historical price will show on the graph the day after the split as $25. The relative value of the stock on 10/07 is exactly what the graph shows, so it's worth $8. People having stock back then simply had one cert worth $32 instead of four worth $8.
The split note is really just a historical marker, and you don't need to do math to cross it.
SIG: HUP
Well said!
Sun's original forte was the personal graphics workstations with bitmap graphics and standard flavor of UNIX. (OK, there was Apollo nad MicroVAXEN too, but hey had lots of non-standard UNIX stuff in them.) The emphasis was "personal". Even though these cost 1/2 to 2/3 an engineer's annual salary at the time, this freed people from the tyranny of the departmental computer. Plus they had turnkey networking, having pioneered many of the newtwork software protocols. Also they one one of the first candidates for the mythical "3M Computer"- one megabyte of memory, one million operations per second, and one mega pixel display. Steve jobs wanted an Apple computer for this slot, but when Apple they balked (four-figure price), he started NeXT.
Sun had a brief renaissance in the 1990s with JAVA (Object-C done right), but it was too little too late.
"Sun has open sourced:"
Sun has open sourced nearly everything they have. Which is why I'm at a loss to understand why IBM is buying them. There's no product Sun makes that has a distinct advantage over an IBM product, nothing Sun has that IBM would really consider an improvement over their products. Solaris over AIX? Eh, that's iffy.
There was a time I thought they'd buy Sun just to own Java, but now that its been open sourced, that reasoning is out the window. I think what IBM is really buying is quite simple: Sun's customer base. That base is fairly loyal, and still significant, and rather than just waiting another decade for Sun to die (and giving rivals a chance at those customers), IBM just decided that it was more practical to buy Sun out now. It's the only thing that makes sense to me. They'll probably integrate a few Sun products into their lineup, but frankly I think a lot of Sun's stuff will just be allowed to wither and disappear... become abandonware.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
they will continue to promote it as they do now, but will have more control over it.
(the control thing is likely not a good thing overall IMHO)
But no way they dump Java (and then of course Websphere), their services business is reliant heavily on these products.
IBM loves Java, they will love it more when they own it.
So IBM have realised that Linux doesn't cut it on big iron (even big x86 boxen) and they need a decent OS in the form of Solaris. AIX is good but it doesn't have the broad base that Solaris has and Linux is starting to look flaky.
Wonderfull !!!
I am an AIX admin and I used to work and loved Solaris, does this mean where are going to see an SolArIX in the future, the possiblities...... :)
sparc/power platform combined technology etc.. jummy jummy
ZFS + AIX = HAHA !!
:)
and the year 2000, when IBM decided to acquire Sequent and Sequent under the pressure of investors gave in. Although they had a good product line, sales were questionable compared to a global competitor. I think that Sun is undervalued in that price. They can certainly push the envelope a lot higher, but will they given the tough times and the sales of their chipset flagship. The thing is, I hate to see Solaris having the faith of DYNIX PTX :-( , as a technologist/engineer.
Yet, somehow, IBM manages to continually make gobs and gobs of money.
Troll, Troll, go away and flame again some other day
Linux + GNOME + OpenOffice + Firefox sounds better to me :-)
IBM was, is, and always will be a company of brilliant engineers that can't market water in a desert.
I was also a die hard OS/2 user (94-02). My version of that was "IBM couldn't sell water in the desert but Microsoft would have people lined up to get the next version of sand."
Yes, IBM has a tendency to kill good software. When they bought Lotus many people expected them to push Smart Suite up to compete with MS Office (At the time Office wasn't anywhere near the giant that it has become today). Dead. Notes was dead before MS really had Exchange in decent shape too.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
The best reasons for IBM to acquire Sun would be to get rid of an annoying competitor and to insure that someone else doesn't pick up Sun's patents. Sun seems to be doing a pretty good job of the former itself, and if the latter is the case IBM could perform a hostile takeover for a fraction of the amount being discussed right now.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
in that case
-mysql and DB2 would be owned by the same company
-zfs and jfs would be ownded by the same company (yes i know jfs can also be licensed as GPL)
-jsp could be defined by the owners of websphere
-java technologies held by IBM and Sun could be merged
etc...
IBM doesn't have Java?
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/
What the heck is Oracle waiting for? I truly think it should be Oracle the one buying Sun and not IBM. Oracle and Sun will definitely complement each other.
I'm sure Oracle would love to control MySQL. We know the story there. But for the most part, it would be totally complementary, and would put it in par with its bigger competitors. I would get servers, (finally) a decent IDE, an operating system, and a truckload of technology, like ZFS.
IBM acquiring Sun is not terribly bad, but will Oracle would be better.
Interesting that the company more committed to open source is the one on the auction block, don't you think?
...It's all right.
>It's a shame Linux has a license that's too >restrictive to allow it to incorporate other >features, but if you pick a restrictive license >you have to live with the consequences)
Yes, its a shame that the license which has helped Linux achieve what it has through massive collaboration hasnt been better.
We can debate till the sun comes up whether Linux would have been more successful had it not used the GPL1/2 but the proof is pretty clear that it has done one hell of a job, all hating and bitching aside.
IBM figured out how to make money from Java, which is something Sun still hasn't done. IBM in this merger could be perceived as attempting to prevent their huge investment in Java from going down the tubes, in the not-unlikely event of a catastrophic Sun failure, or as preventing acquisition of Sun's Java team by a competitor.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
It seems to be "common geek knowledge" that IBM has this unified corporate animosity to Microsoft -- often blamed on fallout from their split during the OS/2, Windows NT days. This is a seriously naive impression of IBM. It's a giant corporation with entire business units (some probably bigger than Sun) which make enormous sums of money by introducing complexity into the customer environment, and up-selling integration services to "manage" that complexity.
IBM LOVES LOVES LOVES the fact that Windows is a font of unnecessary complexity.
IBM exists as a giant IT behemoth today, precisely because Windows sucks, and they know it. They will do nothing to jeopardize the Windows cash cow.
Even back in that brief window of time when OS/2 could be perceived as a viable alternative, IBM was busily rolling out their internal Windows-based desktop systems infrastructure, in most cases replacing an X-Term infrastructure. OS/2 never even had a chance in the real world, even though it had strong proponents for many years, they were all outside of IBM. Inside of IBM, OS/2 was relegated to a POS terminal system, then trimmed back to an ATM system when the POS systems went Windows.
As recently as a few years ago, when IBM senior managers were betting big on Linux, and bragging publicly about investing a billion dollars a year (and probably more these days) on Linux, IBM customers couldn't even get IBM to submit proposals based on Linux for simple tasks for which Linux was very well suited. IBM instead proposed convoluted, unstable Windows-based "solutions" which cost more. Customers could BEG IBM for Linux based solutions and not get them. IBM actively fought against efforts at their customers to actually use Linux.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Some Sun employees will be brought over to IBM. Just a word of advice, ONLY take IBM positions. If they offer "Long Term Supplemental" or "Contractor" positions, run, do not walk, RUN out of the offer.
IBM treats IBMers very well. Long Term Supplemental are treated well, but they are (and always will be) second class citizens. Keep this in mind if you are being moved over to IBM from Sun.
I hope they can turn Java into something other than a slow, bloated, steaming pile of suck.
It may be great to develop in, but I've yet to see a Java app that wasn't excruciatingly slow, awkward to use, or bloated like a corpse.
.
Yes, Sun servers will disappear--IBM will exploit the Sun power efficiencies and multi-core (Niagara) technology to revive their power line likely. Look out Intel.
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As for networking, Sun is very good at network administration and net tools. This will keep Cisco at bay for networking services and network IT (lots of IBM consultants do network IT). Sun Federal is a pretty big share of the federal IT pie.
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Sun has pretty much open-sourced all their software--but had no business plan to make money from it (it was soley on H/W), IBM is mainly services oriented, so it will get 'dark'-intellectual property for free from Sun tech gurus. BUT we'll definitely see a big layoff after a takeover IBM culture != Sun culture.
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IBM Global Services uses Java a lot and I see a new IBM JVM coming soom (like Oracle's JVM). The Websphere s/w stack will be complete AGAIN. This will be interesting as I'm sure they're (Sun and IBM) are tired of the IceaTea/OpenJDK effort cause they plainly....suck in a enterprise environment.
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Websphere == JBoss (Oracle)
OpenSolaris == Oracle Linux
Eclipse >>> Jdeveloper (say good buy to Netbeans!)
Glassfish will be released to the community & Alphaworks.
Sun's Java will be released to Alphaworks. JCP will be dissolved!
MySql will become DB2-lite (like Oracle Express)
J2ME will become a new product line for mobile -- I would not be surprised if they take J2ME closed source (since Android is kicking butt).
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JavaFx and StarOffice are the only ones that would have an unknown fate. (I would not be surprised if it gets convert to a cloud app like GApps! And JavaFx gets released to Alphaworks).
-
Sun: Good bye old friend. It was a sweet ride and lots of memories. May the Schwartz be with you.
This is M and A mania ala RJR Nabisco and AOL/ Times Warner. This is going to destroy Suns legacy and cost IBM big time. The only reason IBM would buy Sun is to acquire rights to Sunâ(TM)s patents and then wield them despotically in a way Sun never did. The long story there is this will accelerate the movement to simply ban software patents the way business method patents were all but disposed of by the Supreme Court recently. What does Sun have that IBM wants? This is not about a smaller company being bought for their technology. Itâ(TM)s about a larger company buying a weakened rival in order to kill off a competitor. This is HP and Compaq / Carly Fiorina II. Sun could continue as it is. It has the cash. It has the vision. The future of computing / cloud based applications, PaaS SaaS is on its side. If anything, theyâ(TM)ve been too far ahead of their times. If IBM buys Sun you can bet that developers will desert Java en mass. IBM has their own VM just the way they have their own GUI toolkit for Java. They'll do for Java what they did for the GUI, except now there will be no countervailing force to stop them. In the software arena, IBM has the worst case of NIH ever seen. Their developers are convinced they can do everything better, with marginal results and more importantly, the creation of discontinuities in technology development and adoption. IBM broke the Java the GUI community into two camps for NO good effect when it introduced SWT. So also with Eclipse, which is a poor imitation of IntelliJ and NB. The cultural differences between IBM and Sun developers are where the rubber will meet the road on this M and A. Developers are not so many thinking cogs that you can shuffle around from company to company, like other assets. They are people with a POV and an attitude about what they do. That is, to the extent they are any good at what they do. To the victor, IBM will not go the spoils. Here is a dose of reality to all my friends on Wall Street and in management at both companies. Beneath the level of anything any analyst can see or quantify, there are little tiny social and psychological micro-events that determine how the knowledge that is in the heads and practices of Sunâ(TM)s employees - which is what gives Sun its real value - gets transferred or not to IBM. So you bought the company. So what. Trust me, you did not buy the developers. Quite the opposite. If you think you can walk into any part of the Sun IP, excepting the patents, and take ownership of it, you and Wall Street have a big surprise coming. It is not under your control, and it never was and it never will be. The culture clash between the Sun way of doing things, egalitarian, optimistic, inventive, forward looking and social is going to slam head on into the well documented culture of manipulation, mean spirited employee relations, exploitative relationships with its customers (billable hours), aggressive and opportunistic use of the broken IP system (Phelps), divisive, conceited and rank-abusing management hierarchy, forced rankings among employees where the bottom 10% are automatically fired, etc. etc. that exists at IBM. Prediction- the best of Sun employees flee to Google and Adobe, the rest foot drag and passively resist their new-found hell, IBM destroys zfs, Netbeans and other middleware products, Swing and finally Java itself through a combination ineptitude , alienation of key developers, grandiosity and conceit and when it is all over a huge amount of really good stuff simply no longer exists, the market is poorer and the forward momentum of software development is set back by 15 years.
Sun, like DEC, contributed a lot of technologies that we use today despite the worst efforts of IBM, like Microsoft, to retard progress.
(source)
Abstract Machine Test Utility for Linux Common Criteria Certificate
Abstract Machine Test Utility (AMTU) is an administrative utility to check whether the underlying protection mechanism of the hardware are still being enforced.
AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications
AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications contains a collection of open source and GNU software built for AIX 5L for IBM pSeries systems and IBM RS/6000.
Ami - Korean Input Method
Korean IMS (Input Method System) Ami.
Anaconda
Anaconda is the installation program for Red Hat distributions.
Apache
Home of the Apache Web server and several dozen related projects.
Apache Ant
Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool.
Apache APR
Apache Portable Runtime
Apache Cocoon
A Web development framework built around the concepts of separation of concerns and component-based Web development.
Apache DB project
Open source database solutions
Apache Directory
The Apache Directory project aims to produce a high-performance and production-quality LDAP server written in Java.
Apache Excalibur
Excalibur's primary product is a lightweight, embeddable Inversion of control container named Fortress that is written in Java code.
Apache Forrest
Apache Forrest is an XML standards-oriented documentation framework based upon Apache Cocoon, providing XSLT stylesheets and schemas, images, and other resources.
Apache Geronimo
Apache Geronimo is the J2EE server project of the Apache Software Foundation. The aim of the project is to produce a large and healthy community of J2EE developers tasked with the development of an open-source, certified J2EE server that: is licensed under the Apache License, passes Sun's TCK for J2EE 1.4, and reuses the best ASF/BSD licensed code available today, with new ASF code to complete the J2EE stack.
Apache Gump
Apache's continuous integration tool
Apache HTTP Server
The Apache project develops and maintains an open-source HTTP server for various modern desktop and server operating systems.
Apache Jakarta
A diverse set of open source Java solutions
Apache James
The Apache Java Enterprise Mail Server (Apache James) is a 100% pure Java SMTP and POP3 Mail server and NNTP News server. James was designed to be a complete and portable enterprise mail engine solution based on currently available open protocols.
Apache Lenya
Apache Lenya is an Open Source Java/XML Content Management System and comes with revision control, site management, scheduling, search, WYSIWYG editors, and workflow.
Apache Logging Services
Cross-language logging services for purposes of application debugging and auditing.
Apache Maven
Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool. Based on the concept of a project object model (POM), Maven can manage a project's build, reporting and documentation from a central piece of information.
Apache mod_Perl
mod_perl brings together the full power of the Perl programming language and the Apache HTTP server
Apache Portals
Apache Portals is a collaborative software development project dedicated to providing robust, full-featured, commercial-quality, and freely available portal-related software on a variety of platforms and programming languages.
Apache SpamAssassin
SpamAssassin uses a wide variety of local and network tests to identify spam signatures.
Apache Struts
The goal of the Apache Struts project is to encourage application architectures based on the "Model 2" approach, a variation of the classic Model-View-Controller (MVC) design paradigm. Under Model 2, a servlet (or equivalent) manages business logic execution, and presentation logic resides mainly in server pages.
Apache Tcl
An umbrella for Tcl-Apache integration efforts
Apache Tuscany
Tuscany provides multiple language implementations of the Service Component Architecture (S
"IBM Offers To Move Laid Off Workers To India" and "Everyone in Indian cities is at risk of consuming human feces, if they're not already, the Ministry of Urban Development concluded in September.
In fact, I'm going to contact my Congressmen today to recommend this stipulation. Please do the same if you love America.
Seastead this.
This makes a lot of sense: Sun is mostly about Java these days, but they haven't figured out hot to monetize Java. IBM, on the other hand, is making quite a bit of money with Java.
Sun has been running Java into the ground slowly. Hopefully, IBM can put Java on the right track again: fully open source it, fix its performance problems, provide better native interfaces, provide better integration with Linux, enable interoperability with Mono/.NET, etc.
So, does this mean we'll see official Solaris on Power or PowerPC machines?
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
Should flee immediately if this goes through. In the 17 months since my employer's acquisition by IBM, absolutely nothing has been done to encourage technical folks to stay, compensation has been cut, goals changed frequently and the bureaucracy is endless. The place is really keen on backbiting and duplicity though.
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Bzzzt! Thanks for playing, "You Bet Your Geek Card!" Now, please hand it over.
You can't even find the word "mainframe" in most IBM quarterly earning reports. Why not? Because it's a tiny fraction of the $125 Billion in revenue that IBM generates in a year.
IBM Reports 2008 First-Quarter Results
Sales of "System Z" (they change the name every few years to try to keep it sounding fresh) are presently so small that they don't even break it out. It's bundled in with the UNIX systems sales, which include AIX and others, and with the AS/400 sales (the name of this platform and it's operating system changes about every 18 months, but it's presently called IBM i).
I maintain that IBM makes more money from Windows, by orders of magnitude, than they do from "mainframes". If you're going to convince me otherwise, you're going to need to do your own homework.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Good, because it is about the only thing that would prevent quick decline of Java. Sun isn't doing a good job with Java 7 (how long has it been, already? and how many times had the feature list been cut?) so far.
Though it will definitely be interesting to see where IBM could get Java... SWT in base install? That could actually mean decent desktop applications... hmm
That is the opinion of Danese Cooper.
She's that person that just sucks up to the open source industry and tries to pretend she is an open source leader by proxy.
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IBM is starting to do much better in that area. Still there are a TOOOOO MANY of bureaucratic procedures and HR is the worst enemy of any person at IBM.
You have nothing to fear from this scenario. IBM never (as a rule) integrates any of their acquired products with any other IBM product -- at least not for delivery as a standard feature of the products in question. Instead, they sell you consultants to do custom glue for your unique environment.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Oh dear. I just thought again about what you said. If IBM actually thought about this stuff the way you do...
*shudder*
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Stanford University Network.
I think most people are lacking the historical perspective to understand the broader symbolic meaning of this buyout.
SUN represents everything about computer evolution, the computer is the network, Silicon Valley enterpreneurship, crusty - bearded old Unix guys, hacker culture, West Coast Innovation, etc.
IBM represents New York, East Coast, old-school business mentality, mainframes, closed-source, proprietary, white-shirt-and-tie cubicle-dwelling programmers.
It's the end of the Net as we know it.
If you look at the "1984" Apple Commercial: Big Brother just won.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Q. What do you get when you combine Sun with IBM?
A. IBM.
So this was actually made up about Apple, not the last time there was talk about them being acquired by IBM, but actually the time before that.
Looks as if the most recent Cisco initiatives are being taken seriously by IBM and SUN exec's also see the writing on the wall.
The question: is what will HP and Dell do in response to the shifting sands?
IMB was bought by the Chinese company Lenovo.
The real IMB is just the software department of the old IMB and that's far less than $100bn. The "new" IMB just publishes some linux articles and collects fees from the last five Lotus Domino Notes users left.
Merger-generated synergy is more than just layoffs (or "redundancies" as the Brits say). It also includes sales and marketing schemes such as cross-promoting products between subsidiaries (whether they make sense or not), and bundling applications (at a "reduced price" unless you're Amazon) from one division with hardware from another. After all, you've (supposedly) just reduced the sales cost on one product, so you can afford to discount the sale price on the total transaction.
Another synergy is to cut costs (in product/program development) and increase revenue by selling the same or similar products under different brands. Retain the old entity names after the merger (example: HP/Compaq, IBM/Sun), but replace competing product lines with rebranded versions of the "best version" (probably cheaper to build or more profitable, but possibly highest volume). Eventually, customers will forget that there's really less competition and less choice. (At least, that's the theory.)
Just remember this: synergy is all about benefits for the producer; any advantages for the consumer are secondary to that. It's a marketeer's dream (and a savvy consumer's worst nightmare), but it's still synergy.
What do you get when you cross IBM and Sun?
IBM
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
When IBM bought Rational, they kept some of the high-margin products, but the lowest-cost Rational product, Visual Test, was discontinued, not open sourced, and they wouldn't even allow you to buy a license for the current version.
So if Sun's products are free and compete with profitable offerings IBM already has, don't be surprised if they get buried.
I got this information from the Linux Foundation at http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment.php/
Respect the Constitution
There is only one reason IBM wants to acquire Sun: If Sun is acquired by Cisco instead, Cisco will instantly become a credible enterprise computing supplier. Cisco is the #1 competitive threat for IBM in the long run...
> Q. What do you get when you combine Sun with IBM?
> A. IBM.
I'm going to miss the Sun logo.
slashdottagsshorterthanhaikunewartform
"I'm sorry, I don't recall that particular meme â" and I was working at Sun at the time."
If you've never heard of those statements, how do you know you were at Sun at the time they were said?
A slow collision of a really huge garbage truck with a somewhat smaller garbage truck
McNealy in San Jose Mercury News, 3 August 1997:
"We had 12.9 gigabytes of PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought, 'What a huge waste of corporate productivity'. So we banned it. And we've had three unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since."
"...give everybody plastic Mylar sheets and all the pens they need to scribble on them", and to use what he describes as "the Bill Joy font. You can see where he licked his thumb and erases. It's so much faster," and leaves you time to get on with the job.
Would IBM just add SPARC platforms to whatever competing architectures it has, or will it phase it out?
(Bloomberg) IBM Said to Be in Talks to Buy Sun Microsystems (Update2)
2009-03-18 21:26:40.816 GMT
(Adds Hewlett-Packard offer in seventh paragraph.)
By Katie Hoffmann and Connie Guglielmo
March 18 (Bloomberg) -- International Business Machines
Corp. is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems Inc., aiming to take
out a smaller rival to gain a greater share of the computer-
server market, according to people familiar with the situation.
The purchase would give IBM access to customers loyal to the
Sun brand, according to one person, who declined to be identified
because the talks are private. IBM may pay at least $6.5 billion,
the Wall Street Journal said today, valuing Sun at almost twice
its $4.97 closing price yesterday. Sun shares surged 79 percent.
IBM Chief Executive Officer Sam Palmisano is going after
acquisitions to build up the computer-services provider amid the
worst economic slump in more than a quarter-century. Buying Sun
would give it the scope to compete more effectively for clients as
companies curb spending, Morningstar Inc. analyst Rick Hanna said.
âoeIt all has to do with scale, because at the end of the
day, thereâ(TM)s only so much of the pie that you can have,â said
Hanna, who is based in Chicago. âoeSun was ripe for consolidation
just because it lacked scale to really sustain its investment.â
Sun counts General Electric Co. and General Motors Corp.
among its customers. Servers, which run networks and Web sites,
account for almost half Sunâ(TM)s total sales, and the global market
topped $50 billion last year. Last quarter, server sales fell
14 percent, the most since the aftermath of the dot-com bust, as
customers held off buying both costly and inexpensive systems,
according to research firm IDC.
âoeWe do not comment on market rumors about our company,â
said Sun spokesman Shawn Dainas.
Hewlett-Packard Passes
Sun had been in talks with Hewlett-Packard Co. starting
around November before deciding to pursue serious negotiations
with IBM. Dell Inc. and EMC Corp. werenâ(TM)t involved in those
discussions, the person said.
Cisco Systems Inc. was aware of the talks though didnâ(TM)t get
involved, another person with knowledge said.
Hewlett-Packard, the second-largest maker of servers behind
IBM, decided to pass on the deal, another person familiar with
the talks said.
Hewlett-Packard declined to comment, said spokeswoman
Christina Schneider. Cisco doesnâ(TM)t comment on speculation, said
spokeswoman Kristin Carvell. Dell spokesman Jess Blackburn said
the company doesnâ(TM)t comment on rumors. EMC spokesman Dave Farmer
declined to comment.
The acquisition of Sun also would help IBM fuel growth in
software, its most profitable business. Sunâ(TM)s Solaris operating
system, which competes with Linux programs and Microsoft Corp.â(TM)s
Windows, runs computers and data centers.
âCrown Jewelâ(TM)
Sun last year purchased software company MySQL AB for about
$1 billion, gaining programs that develop databases and let
customers such as Google Inc. use them for free. The company makes
money from maintenance fees on the database. Sun said in January
it expects software sales to reach about $600 million a year.
Umm.... has no one noticed that their last reported net assets were at least the same as this reported deal? a 1:1 trade in cash for their net asset for a business that still has market opportunity? I wouldn't have thought so...
Parent post (#27249073) is only Funny if one is one step away from crossing the border between sanity and madness and on the wrong side of the border.
The funny moderator is most likely an example of what happens when one isn't able to properly ignore PHBs and other such critters and deep down he or she knows that it actually isn't funny at all but extremely insightful. Still he or she can't get beyond the perceived fact that it won't matter and that it will never happen precisely because it's the most sane and sensible scenario.
Kind regards,
an AC straddling that border
ibm cell processor, into which they've dumped buttloads of dough, plus sun's development prowess in parallel processing.
Nobody's mentioned VirtualBox! IBM buys Sun, then they get their own desktop level virtualization software. Then they put OS/2 on it, and everyone can finally run their beloved OS.
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Can't believe nobody in this thread mentioned VirtualBox.
If the merger goes through, I would expect to see them using the Sun name to build Linux PCs in India that use Micro-Channel Architecture.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
The other way: get driver in CD. Install. Hope it works. If it doesn't pray the manufacturer will help you, otherwise you are screwed.
The Linux way: ensure that hardware support comes out of the box for supported hardware. The user install Linux and if the hardware is supported the user has to do nothing at all. If the hardware is not supported the blame is firmly in the manufacturer which could not care less about letting others make their hardware usable.
If such model makes Linux popular or not I don;t care. What I know is that I can use older computers today with Linux that will not support other OSs and for which there will be no drivers.
Sorry, but I fail to see why Linux should move to be inferior in order to fulfil the lower expectations of users.
If people chose never to adopt Linux that is fine, Linux was never launched with the intention of be "marketed", anybody else making arguments on this regard simply does not understand the philosophy and aims of Linux and FOSS in general.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The only thing that Sun CEO back then asked was to use their own software (Star Office) instead of PowerPoint.
A very reasonable request.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The date didn't give it away?
I keep telling that IBM decision is even connected to Apple not getting a 3 Ghz G5 and going nuts and not getting a mobile CPU (not G5!) option from IBM.
IBM stays away from consumer market. Console CPUs are fine for them, MS and Sun does the caring and in MS case, even the entire capability design with sw support.
You probably know there is POWER6 which hits amazing Mhz and benchmark levels and massively scalable. It is a server chip (not mainframe) but guess what? There is also POWER6UL which is suitable for Desktop. I am not saying Apple will give up Windows/x86 compatibility boost, I am just saying for people who have mistaken IBM NOT being capable of making a 3Ghz processor and hand to Apple.
Regarding Java/Sun. Remember IBM shipping end user focused JVM for Windows which performed way better than Sun one? They gave up it too while they ship Java6 stable to Linux/PPC64 for years. A thing which Apple still couldn't (or wouldn't) ship.
"Me too."
Apache's embedded database project Derby was original IBM Cloudscape.
I keep hearing people say that SPARC* is proprietary, and I guess it's because they don't do their homework. Let's get one thing straight.
You can go right over here:
http://www.opensparc.net/
and download Verilog code for SPARC chips.
Ask AMD how open x86 is. When was the last time Fujitsu got sued over SPARC64?
*Which one?
-IBM buys Sun without the microprocessor/systems division, either spinoff or layoff all engineers there. -IBM keeps minimal engineers to support existing Sun systems and gradually migrate customers to IBM systems -IBM makes good use of Java
scott?
who's that?
mr ponytail guy is now in charge. where have you been?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I find it hard to believe so few people have realised that the single biggest thing Sun have which IBM covet is Java.
$6.5bn is small compared to IBM's profit about half of which is from IBM SWG which is powered by ... Java. Websphere & Lotus both use java in their development and hosting platforms. IBM need to control java to be able to truly control the destiny of their app dev/host platforms in the same way as Microsoft do.
"Grammar Nazis' need entertainment"
Fer chrissake, don't us an apostrophe for plurals!
--Formerly ignored Punctuation Nazi
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth