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What an IBM-Sun Merger Might Mean For Java, MySQL, Developers

Posted by timothy on from the get-our-your-auguring-tools dept.

An IBM-Sun merger is a tantalyzing possibility; snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister suggests that an IBM/Sun merger could crown Big Blue king of enterprise software development. 'Acquiring Sun would make IBM the clear leader in Java, as it would become the caretaker of the open source reference implementation of the JRE,' which, along with GlassFish, would become entry-level gateways to IBM's WebSphere stack. Moreover, MySQL would give IBM's database division a significant entry-level hook, and NetBeans/Eclipse would unify IBM's front against Visual Studio. 'All in all, this move would solidify IBM's role as "the developer company,"' McAllister writes. 'In other words, if this merger goes through and you're an enterprise developer and you're not an IBM customer now, get ready — because you soon will be. Better bring your wallet.'" And blackbearnh writes with a short interview with Brian Aker (who came to Sun as MySQL's director of architecture, and is now the lead for MySQL fork Drizzle) about what life would be like under Big Blue's control.

57 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. What an IBM-Sun Merger Might Mean by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IBM

    1. Re:What an IBM-Sun Merger Might Mean by Kozz · · Score: 4, Funny

      IBS.

      --
      I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
    2. Re:What an IBM-Sun Merger Might Mean by Hurricane78 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Oh my... And I thought Eclipse would suck very hard. How horrible is Visual Studio then?
      Like developing for the IE... by using MS Word for layouting... with a large portion of Radeon driver quality... on a Windows ME / VMS mutant... running on a retro Edsel in-car original Pentium/VAX hybrid?

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    3. Re:What an IBM-Sun Merger Might Mean by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 5, Funny

      Let this be a lesson to all you companies out there that are not IBM. Stop being not IBM. IBM will not tolerate any companies that are not IBM, so if you value your shareholder value, stop being not IBM. Any companies that persist in being not IBM will eventually be forced by IBM to stop being not IBM.

      I repeat, if you are not IBM, then you must stop being not IBM immediately, or else.

      --
      Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
    4. Re:What an IBM-Sun Merger Might Mean by rackserverdeals · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not sure that Sun's in such a bad position that they might need a buyout.

      Things aren't great right now. They've been cash flow positive for a while up until 2008. That was a big deal considering the beating they've been taking.

      They have a decent amount of cash. Some of their acquisitions may take time to pay off. MySQL, I'm not too sure that was worth 1Bln.

      The strategy Schwartz has takes a big investment and will take time to realize the financial benefits. Right now, with everything going on, it may take longer to realize the financial benefits, but the same conditions also make the acceptance of open source platforms more attractive so it could help spur developer involvement with Sun technologies.

      They may not buy the support or the high margin hardware right now, but in a year or two as the company starts realizing the benefits of using Sun's open source stack, they might pick up support contracts and hardware. Maybe even some of their consulting services. If not, then they become a success story they can use in marketing.

      Sun's big margin customers seem to be in the financial sector and we all know how that sector is doing. Their lower end servers have much lower profit margins. In that space, they have to compete with Dell, and they do pretty well on price. But if you need to scale vertically, you don't have as many options. If you want a big box for your application you also want Solaris on it too. It's the only OS on midrange servers that's worth looking at IMO.

      I'm not sure Sun needs to be bought, but whoever does, if they handle the merger properly, would be getting one hell of a deal.

      --
      Dual Opteron < $600
  2. Can't imagine (sorry) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The company culture between Sun and IBM are too different for a successful merger. The trend that anything big blue acquires seem to die a slow and agonizing death isn't helping either.

    1. Re:Can't imagine (sorry) by CannonballHead · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The trend that anything big blue acquires seem to die a slow and agonizing death isn't helping either. [citation needed]

      I haven't heard about the trend lately. IBM seems to be doing generally pretty well.

    2. Re:Can't imagine (sorry) by Neil+Watson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The transition to Notes alone is likely to send Sun talent running for the hills.

      --
      UNIX/Linux Consulting
    3. Re:Can't imagine (sorry) by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 4, Funny

      The transition to Notes alone is likely to send Sun talent running for the hills.

      They're dedicated professionals and they'll adapt to Notes and other aspects of IBM culture in a professional way: by curling into fetal position under a desk in the corner of the office and whimpering pathetically.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    4. Re:Can't imagine (sorry) by Tanktalus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Apparently, IBM wants that business back.

      Seriously, IBM didn't buy Sequent for Sequent. They bought it for NUMA. And that lives on in AIX (can't recall if it's iSeries or pSeries or both).

      I'm trying to recall something that IBM has bought that died when IBM wanted the technology to live (as opposed to ransacking the company for technology and/or patents to integrate into other products). Lotus? Still alive and kicking (no matter how much some want it to die). Rational? Yup - even displaced some of IBM's software (ClearCase displaced IBM's CMVC). Cognos? Too new to tell. Informix? Still alive and kicking even though that one obviously is something IBM bought to ransack.

      I suspect IBM is looking to buy Sun for Java and OpenOffice (which they're already rebranding as Lotus Symphony), and getting MySQL would be considered a freebie. This makes sense when you realise that IBM is still a little sore about losing the PC OS war, and are doing everything they can to combat Microsoft (e.g., pledging not to pursue patent claims against open-source software, defending Linux against SCO). Java is still seen as a platform to make desktop OS irrelevant, and OpenOffice is a direct attack on Microsoft's other main source of income. Cripple those two aspects of MS, and you've crippled all of MS.

    5. Re:Can't imagine (sorry) by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 2, Informative
      Here's your citation.

      XyWrite

      Oh and Lotus products seem to be doing well too...

      --
      These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
    6. Re:Can't imagine (sorry) by vic-traill · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Here's your citation. XyWrite

      But IBM never acquired XyWrite, did they? Although, IIRC, they screwed XyQuest and left them holding the bag when IBM bailed. Can I find a citation? [ ... on hold music here ... ] Here 'tis: http://yesss.freeshell.org/x/_xywhat.htm

      Too bad - I was a XyWrite fan.

      --
      [17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
  3. Keep Sun Independent! by javacowboy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here's a poll to vote on maintaining Sun's independence from IBM:

    http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/426985/results

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    This space left intentionally blank.
    1. Re:Keep Sun Independent! by The+Hooloovoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Online petitions work on companies like Facebook because pleasing as many random people as possible is their business model. A Web 2.0 company's product is its users. Nobody pays for Facebook as an end user -- the people paying for Facebook are paying for your ad views, marketing data, etc.

      IBM and Sun shareholders, on the other hand, couldn't give less of a hoot about your feelings. Companies buy software based on a number of factors, but these factors always tie back to the bottom line. Are you going to stop visiting your favorite website because it would be using "IBM Glassfish" instead of "Sun Glassfish"?

    2. Re:Keep Sun Independent! by ByOhTek · · Score: 2, Insightful

      OK. I voted. "No".

      Sorry, I've never been very impressed by Sun, and to be honest, for the longest time, I had better luck with IBMs JVM. Given the choice (and my prior experience), I'll take an IBM product over a Sun product any day.

      Then again, I also have had a Mac and went back, as your sig mentions, so maybe I've just had different experiences, and have different priorities.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
    3. Re:Keep Sun Independent! by Dogtanian · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yes, IBM was instrumental in creating the personal computer.

      Uh, NO.

      IBM may have developed the original " IBM Personal Computer" (ancestor of the models we're still using today). However, they sure as hell did *not* invent the original concept of a personal computer. That had been around for years (arguably originating with the Apple II) and there were already dozens of personal computers by the time IBM's came out.

      Even if we accept that you meant "personal computer" as the later synonym for IBM's PC and compatible rivals, these were nothing revolutionary in themselves, even at the time. The original IBM PC was almost entirely built from off-the-shelf and pre-existing parts (including MS-DOS which was originally based on a bought-in borderline ripoff of CP/M). Reasonably powerful- which it ought to have been at the price- but not revolutionary, and likely a success mainly because it was made by IBM rather than on merit.

      I'm sure that IBM- at that time the evil behemoth of the mainframe era- only gave the go ahead to *their* PC because it was *already* clear by then that personal computers in general were the future regardless of what they did- and that if they'd left it any longer they'd have lost out on this and been increasingly marginalised. Given the choice, I'm sure they'd rather have killed the personal computer and sat on their mainframe laurels. The revolutionary thing was IBM even building a PC (and the informal way in which it was designed), but that was only because they were forced into it by an even bigger revolution.

      Yes, IBM's PC became the de facto standard, but it wasn't the original personal computer, and the format's success had more to do with the name on the box (originally) and the very genericness of the hardware making it easy to clone (later on) than anything revolutionary about its design.

      --
      "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
    4. Re:Keep Sun Independent! by evilpenguin · · Score: 3, Funny

      I agree. IBM has been delivering superior support and Java tools for quite a while. Eclipse is the best IDE I have used, apart, perhaps, from the old Borland text-based IDE for Turbo C++.

      And yes, I have used Netbeans and Visual Studio. And Kdevelop and Monodevelop and vim, vi, and emacs. And "brief" back when MS-DOS was the way to go.

      And ed and Turbo Pascal back on CP/M. How many of you young punks used CP/M? Huh? Now get the hell off my lawn!

      IBM is a stodgy old enterprise player, but they are solid and professional. They have been much friendlier to open source in general and Linux in particular than Sun has. I for one welcome our new Big Blue overlords...

  4. Developers! by castorvx · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... 'All in all, this move would solidify IBM's role as "the developer company,"' ...

    No one tell Ballmer. I'm not sure he could handle this kind of let down.

    1. Re:Developers! by mhall119 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Who has more chairs: Microsoft or IBM?

      IBM. In fact, they have more than 3 times more chairs (well, employees, but a good proxy for # of chairs).

      Heck, they probably have a dozen patents on chairs.

      --
      http://www.mhall119.com
  5. Too big to fail. by tthomas48 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Have we learned nothing from the recent "too big to fail" mess? I realize IBM is already too big to fail, but do we want to let them add to it? Sun failing would be fine for the market. Lots of small companies would jump in to take its place. Sun being bought by IBM would stifle the marketplace and would exert far too much control.

    Sometimes to have a free-ish market we have to think about unpleasant topics like anti-trust.

    1. Re:Too big to fail. by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem here isn't Democrat or Republican (after all, it was a Republican president who signed off on the first big money toss), the problem here is that no one has the balls to say what needs to be said "A company that's too big to fail should never be permitted to exist." We need a new generation of trust busters who would be empowered to forcibly bust up companies that got too big.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:Too big to fail. by larry+bagina · · Score: 2, Interesting

      it's worse than business as usual.

      US Bancorp CEO Richard Davis's comments on TARP:

      "I will say this very bluntly: We were told to take it. Not asked, told. 'You will take it,' " Davis said. "It doesn't matter if you were there on the first night and you were told to sign on the dotted line before you walked out of the office, or whether in the days that followed, you were told to take it."

      "We were told to take it so that we could help Darwin synthesize the weaker banks and acquire those and put them under different leadership," he said. "We are not even allowed to mention that. ... We were supposed to say the TARP money was used for lending."

      Northern Trust (remember them from one of Barney Frank's tantrums?) got sick of complaints for sponsoring a charity golf tournament, so they're in the process of returning TARP money they didn't need and were told to take. (Some other banks are returning the money as well).

      Bank of America agreed to buy Merril Lynch, but tried to back out after discovering they had been cooking their books. Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson made them complete the acquisistion (and put up additional money and loan guarantees).

      JP Morgan acquired Bear Stearns and WaMu. Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia. BoA also acquired countrywide.

      TARP was proposed and approved as a plan to purchase junk mortgages. In reality, it's turned big banks even bigger.

      The money was given to banks so they could loan it? Not exactly.

      Banks sold preferred shares to the government in exchange for preferred shares (which pay a dividend and are first in line in the event of a bankruptcy). Since the money isn't free, they need to loan it out, right?

      Of course, AIG and Citibank couldn't make those payments, so that preferred stock was reorganized to regular non-preferred, non-dividend paying stock.

      And AIG? You know where the bonus money went, but the rest is a mystery. They're basically laundering it to other banks (many of them in Europe).

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    3. Re:Too big to fail. by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The problem was deregulation. The United States learned some pretty hard lessons, along with the rest of the world, in 1929. Laws were crafted to regulate the financial sector as a result of the great crash of 1929. About, oh, 50 years later, Modern Math students who had worked their way up the various ladders started dismantling those regulations. Net result, by the year 2000, people were buying and selling securities, stocks, and bonds on the market, ON CREDIT. Not to mention, futures (gasoline, among others). IF WE WERE TO re-examine the regulations that were in place in - oh - let's take 1960 - and put them back into place, intact, almost all the abuse would be eliminated. This is not to suggest that the market would be fixed overnight - I only suggest that things would stop going downhill, and that things would begin improving. Slowly, maybe, but they would improve.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    4. Re:Too big to fail. by fm6 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I share your dislike of mergers, but...

      Sun failing would be fine for the market. Lots of small companies would jump in to take its place.

      Like who? Most of Sun's customers are big corporate and research entities that have no interest in dealing with anybody who doesn't have a huge sales, distribution, and support operation. If they can't buy from Sun, they won't turn to a white box company. They'll turn to IBM, HP, or Dell.

    5. Re:Too big to fail. by tthomas48 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think you bring up the fact that there are two facets to Sun. There's hardware and there's their services division. How important you think Sun is to the ecosystem seems to revolve more around whether you're a sysadmin or developer. Most of us developers don't even think about Sun as developing hardware. Most of the SysAdmins don't seem to think of Sun as the controlling force behind Java.

  6. There's been a good discussion of this... by tcopeland · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...on the JavaPosse Google group here. Some talk about what this might mean for Netbeans, as one of the JavaPosse guys (Tor Norbye) is (was?) on the NB team.

    Also, what would this do for the massive JavaCC book market? Expand it, I hope!

    --
    The Army reading list
    1. Re:There's been a good discussion of this... by rackserverdeals · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Since 5.0 Netbeans has made tremendous improvements and now the combination of Glassfish and Netbeans is a powerhouse for J2EE development. That is real competition for Websphere Studio which costs a heck of a lot of money.

      With EJB3, using EJB's even for smaller projects, using the full J2EE stack is reasonable. The complexity and performance overhead of EJBs is no longer a problem and it makes it very easy to deploy restful web services.

      There's a great video on the matter from an independent developer at CommunityOne east recently. You can see the video here. When you get to that page click on the link for Video: Netbeans 6.7 and Glassfish v3. It's the third video.

      My favorite quote was about which one is better, Netbeans or Eclipse. The answer was IdeaJ but it's not free :)

      --
      Dual Opteron < $600
  7. The real problem by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is that new releases of Java and Solaris will be EBCDIC only!

    --
    Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
    1. Re:The real problem by mcgrew · · Score: 2, Funny

      No, Java will be supercesed by COBOL.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    2. Re:The real problem by mhall119 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Or has anyone seen a punch card torrent

      You will if you accidentally knock over a box of them. Or is that a stack dump?

      --
      http://www.mhall119.com
  8. "IBM is where good companies go to die" by javacowboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

    IBM will take all of Sun's great software products, and either ruin or kill them through a combination of strategic imperative, incompetence, and bureaucracy.

    Say goodbye to Netbeans. IBM doesn't want competition to Eclipse.

    Watch OpenSolaris get pillaged for bits like ZFS and DTrace to GPL and put in Linux and then left in the ditch (though I don't think they'll kill closed-source Solaris).

    Glassfish will survive only because it already has a large independent community, despite IBM cutting off funding for it.

    Java will take twice as long to evolve, as IBM's bureaucracy will dwarf that of the JCP's. Swing will be slowly killed, to be replaced by SWT. As for Websphere, it's known to break the JEE spec, and indicates the direction IBM will take Java in.

    OpenOffice, right now not the cleanest, most user friendly app, will worsen if Lotus Symphony is anything to go by.

    IBM pays good lip service to open source, and contributes o some strategic projects (ex Apache Harmony), but their true commitment to open source is much less than that of Sun's. That's what the Linux crowd sometimes fails to understand.

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    1. Re:"IBM is where good companies go to die" by ByOhTek · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Say goodbye to Netbeans. IBM doesn't want competition to Eclipse.

      Why? It doesn't compete with eclipse now. I've used modern and 2 year old installs of eclipse, and my last netbeans install was less than 6 months ago.

      Swing will be slowly killed, to be replaced by SWT. As for Websphere, it's known to break the JEE spec, and indicates the direction IBM will take Java in.

      Good riddance. Most swing based applications I have had the misfortune of using, have failed miserably at being cross platform, regardless of Sun or IBM JVM. Even if SWT is worse in that regard, it doesn't matter, because I've given up on swing as far as making any reliable cross platform app. Replacing one thing that is not sufficiently useful with another, well, I could care less.

      OpenOffice, right now not the cleanest, most user friendly app, will worsen if Lotus Symphony is anything to go by.

      I think this is the first thing I can truely agree on. I certainly would not want to see OO disappear or be so defiled.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
    2. Re:"IBM is where good companies go to die" by Ukab+the+Great · · Score: 5, Insightful

      IBM will take all of Sun's great software products, and either ruin or kill them through a combination of strategic imperative, incompetence, and bureaucracy.

      Isn't that Sun's job?

    3. Re:"IBM is where good companies go to die" by javacowboy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Isn't that Sun's job?

      Justify that statement.

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    4. Re:"IBM is where good companies go to die" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Isn't           that           Sun's         job?

    5. Re:"IBM is where good companies go to die" by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Isn't that Sun's job?

      Sun's job is to have one of the worst marketing departments known to man. They create some really great stuff, and many of their strategic acquisitions benefit amazingly well under their umbrella. (e.g. OpenOffice, NetBeans, StorageTek, etc.)

      What Sun fails miserably at is selling their products. On one hand, they give everything long, complex, and confusing names. Like "Sun Java System Directory Service", formerly "SunONE Directory Server", formerly "iPlanet Directory Server", formerly "Netscape Directory Server". Then they take this confusing pile of BS directly to executives. Now executives aren't necessarily stupid people. But if you're expecting them to wade through your piles of BS to understand what it is their buying, you've already failed. Throw in a bit of inconsistent pricing across the board to where the IT guy actually buying the stuff has no idea what price he's going to pay, and you've got a recipe for dissatisfaction.

      Sun needs to learn how to market and how to sell. More to the point, they need to pay more attention to the smaller markets and stop trying to out-IBMing IBM. IBM is better at it. Try out-Delling Dell. Sun was on the right track with their "Hotter than Hell" campaign, but they gave up before it ever came to fruition!

      Which is another thing that tees me off. When Sun DOES get it right, they kill it off before they give it a chance to work. Then they go back to their old ways, and probably tell themselves what a fiasco THAT marketing campaign turned out to be. :-/

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    6. Re:"IBM is where good companies go to die" by samkass · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Dunno about the original poster, but my biggest problem is that it doesn't integrate with Perforce very well. That makes it completely a non-starter. Integration with version control is one of the top-5 tasks any IDE needs to do and in Netbeans it seems like an afterthought.

      After that, Sun embracing OSGi and other de-facto industry standards instead of always re-inventing the wheel would be nice. We really didn't need yet another attempt at a Java application platform.

      And JavaFX support? Who actually cares about JavaFX? It's a DOA technology.

      The nice thing about IBM taking over is that IBM seems to have a MUCH better sense about what actual non-Sun developers like.

      --
      E pluribus unum
  9. Pipedream??? by syousef · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I see this story has been tagged "Pipedream". I don't know what kind of pipe people are smoking these days, but to me it doesn't sound like any kind of pleasant or desirable dream to have one company in control of so many things we depend on...even more so during an economic downturn.

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    1. Re:Pipedream??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      For the most part I don't really understand all the hatred being expressed against IBM. What realistic alternatives are there?

      1. Sun continues its downward spiral into irrelevance and insolvency. Eventually it goes bankrupt and its assets are sold off to the highest bidders.
      Bad for obvious reasons. No one would want to see that.
      2. Sun gets bought out by another company, say HP or Oracle.
      It would be hard to argue that HP or Oracle would be a better owner than IBM, assuming they could even afford it. If Sun is going to get bought out, IBM is probably the best choice. IBM has a much better track record of supporting Open Source than any other old-school company except Sun itself, and heck, IBM already sells Solaris servers, so they would not kill it off for AIX or Linux. Sure they might do something like GPL Solaris technologies in order to get them into Linux, but really who would think this is a bad thing except the zealots?
      3. Sun voluntarily splits itself up into separate companies (Java, Solaris, OpenOffice, MySql, etc).
      Probably the best option for the technologies involved, but it would never happen because the current management would essentially be admitting their own failure. It also might spell bad news for stuff like OpenOffice and OpenSolaris, since they may not end up with a "sugar daddy" to finance development work.

  10. Netbeans/Eclipse... by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    NetBeans/Eclipse would unify IBM's front against Visual Studio.

    I hope Netbeans don't become the mess that Eclipse is threatening to become. The multiple distributions, the commercial only plugins, UI inconsistencies, and instability.

    I know the Eclipse fanboys will object, but I've used both IDEs and Eclipse has its issues and feels like it was built by a committee consisting of competitors.

    With Netbeans, I don't have to worry about CDT not meshing with the current patched version of the platform, or having to choose between Subclipse or Subversive and trying to get past that stupid Java HL issue with Ubuntu. Netbeans just works.

    Nothing against Eclipse, I just don't want any of that crap to migrate over to Netbeans.

    Then there's IBM history other editors like XyWrite...

    --
    These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
  11. Horrible article by Jonboy+X · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wow. Just...wow. All IBM gets out of the deal is the Java name. All the other assets are basically bogus, which the market has already figured out.

    1. Glassfish is still pretty much a toy, as far as J2EE app servers go. If users want free, they go with JBoss. If they wanna pay money for scalability and features and support, they already go with IBM's WebSphere.
    2. IDE's don't bring in money for consulting companies. Besides, Eclipse has been the standard for Java development for so long and by such a wide margin that it's barely even a debate except among industry wags. Also...Java IDE's don't compete with Visual Studio. Sheesh!
    3. MySQL is great and all, but if someone's using it, they're probably doing so to *avoid* high consulting and licensing fees.

    InfoWorld hits another high score in tech buzzword bingo, but misses the point completely...

    --

    "In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
  12. And the answer is... by monkeyboythom · · Score: 4, Insightful

    LAYOFFS!

  13. Re:Visual Studio? by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd love to see a C# plugin for NetBeans, personally. NetBeans 6.5 is the first release I'd call almost as good as Visual Studio (I can't stand Eclipse, personally), and there's not much work left to make it a genuine competitor for what I use it for. I'm already looking at moving my C++ development over to it. Having an .NET plugin would seal the deal for me.

    (It can't be any worse than MonoDevelop...)

    --
    "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
  14. Re:IBM = No service by rackserverdeals · · Score: 5, Interesting

    More importantly, what has IBM open sourced?

    Sun has open sourced more of their own code than IBM has. Actually, Sun probably has open sourced more lines of code than anyone for that matter.

    For large organizations, such as Sun and IBM, that have licensing agreements for parts of their technology, open sourcing a closed source project is not a trivial matter.

    There's still a bit at Sun that was supposed to be open sourced that hasn't. Will IBM continue this? Will they put the same amount of effort into Sun's current open source projects? This is what worries me. Some of Sun's important open source projects compete with IBM's open and closed products.

    The acquisition of Sun would have to transform the mindset of IBM. The open source gameplan that Jonathan Schwartz outlined in his video blogs seems like a good one, but if they get eaten up by IBM, I don't know if that plan will be able to be set in motion. It seems that when IBM acquires someone, the acquired company becomes more like IBM and not the other way around.

    It's not just about open source though. Sun has been creating a lot of great hardware. The CMT chip based servers are awesome. The Ranger super computer is a great example of what you can do with their massive infiniband switch.

    The billions of dollars they would spend to acquire sun would be worth it just to get Andy Bechtolsheim in my opinion.

    The current economic crisis has made Sun a great bargain for those that can afford to acquire it.

    Netbeans/Eclipse is going to be strange and I really hope that Netbeans doesn't die.

    AIX/Solaris seems easy. IBM would be stupid to kill Solaris. AIX would likely be put on legacy support. Solaris may even become the default OS for IBM's new mainframes.

    Power/Sparc would have to consolidate and with IBM/Sum/Fujitsu working together you might see some even more impressive risc servers coming out.

    OpenOffice.org will continue because IBM uses it as a base for Lotus Symphony. StarOffice may die or get wrapped up in Symphony.

    Glassfish might be tough. Competes with WebSphere and IBM has been more behind Apache's Geronimo app server I think.

    I think Sun's blades might be very appealing to IBM.

    As for Java, I'm more comfortable with it being under Sun than IBM. For all the press IBM has had over the SCO trial, I don't see them as good of an open source company as Sun. I can't remember the details right now, but there were some Apache projects, as well as OpenOffice.org where IBM wasn't really sending stuff upstream. The license in those cases didn't require it, but I still think it says alot, especially considering the financial benefits IBM has received from those projects.

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    Dual Opteron < $600
  15. Re:I'm repeating myself too by ebh · · Score: 2, Informative

    If Rational is any indication, IBM is going to figure out what Sun's cash cows are and hold those customers hostage.

    I've been an enthusiastic ClearCase user and administrator (please let's not start that flamewar again) all the way back to the Atria days. After dealing with IBM as a vendor since they bought Rational, I've seriously considered recommending against ClearCase to my customers.

    It's not just the incompetent and ever-changing bureaucracy, which is indeed infuriating, it's the attitude of their reps. They go way beyond "We've got it, you want it, you get it on our terms." They act more like bill collectors than anything else. At one point, because of a paperwork delay in my purchasing organization, our ClearCase support lapsed. IBM called me EVERY DAY until they got their check, even after I told them to stop and let all their calls go to voice mail.

    I don't know what Sun is like to deal with these days, but no matter how bad they are, it can't be worse than IBM.

  16. SPARC by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm more interested in what IBM will do with the SPARC processor and Solaris, and how that affects Fujitsu.

    --
    the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
    1. Re:SPARC by ggeens · · Score: 2, Informative

      If IBM drops SPARC, Fujitsu will probably become the only supplier of Solaris systems. Both the SPARC architecture and Solaris are available as open source, so IBM cannot easily prevent that.

      Being open source, it is possible that other companies emerge using those technologies. Don't count on it: if anyone believed in that, this would already have happened.

      I'm also unsure about how much traction Solaris will have without SUN.

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      WWTTD?
  17. Define a successful merger. by Rasputin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "The company culture between Sun and IBM are too different for a successful merger."

    Success: [n] Chomp, chomp, gulp.

    Just ask the former employees of Sequent, Informix, or Rational.

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    "I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
  18. Re:A list of open source projects IBM contributes by rackserverdeals · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You do realize that that is just a list of projects they contribute too. It gives no indication of the level of contributions. A lot of those contributions are patches to make sure the projects can work with IBM hardware and software.

    Not saying there contributions are meaningless, but I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that IBM has contributed more to open source than Sun.

    IBM might open source a less powerful version or maybe a pet project, while Sun will go out, buy a company and open source the technology.

    That's a big deal, especially considering the relative size and financial power differences between the two.

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    Dual Opteron < $600
  19. Re:IBM = No service by Rasputin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "For those out there that think this is a good thing, try to navigate IBM's website."

    Yeah, too bad Sun's pages suck equally badly. As much as possible, I've always used Google to search either one.

    --
    "I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
  20. Why can't Apple buy them instead??? by thanasakis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bare with me for a moment.

    Sun is full of PhDs, patents and interesting technologies and I think their corporate culture is much more close to Apple than to IBM. They have a fairly decent server product line with competitive prices, a host of enterprise contracts all over the world and an excellent OSS "server" OS which is still being developed heavily. They have a solid 64-bit RISC architecture coupled with energy efficient multicore processors that give even the best x86 chips a run for their money. Not to mention their storage strategy which is, IMHO, brilliant. ZFS, StorageTek, Lustre, fishworks, mysql all fall into a strategy of acquisitions and development that was commenced several years ago. Has it started yielding financial results yet? Arguably not quite. Was it spot-on? Hell yes. Storage has come and it will be big. The bad economic conditions make their financial problems worse, but it's not like they didn't give their best.

    Apple could really use them to buy its way into the Enterprise. They have already ported dtrace and zfs to MacOSX, demonstrating that a lot of technologies can be used outside of Sun products with success. Considering the stockpile of cash they're sitting on, it would not really be a problem for Apple to buy them. With their combined strength (heard that one before, right?) they could really be a dangerous adversary for IBM, HP and Microsoft.

    Well, if that isn't a pipe dream, then what is?

    1. Re:Why can't Apple buy them instead??? by ishobo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is bad blood between Jobs and McNealy (who is still chairman). I agree though, a merger between Apple and Sun would be better because nothing they have overlaps. Apple picks up enterprise software and hardware, which they clearly lack. They also would get a global services group. Although Sun is not profitable, they have little debt and $2.5 billion on hand.

      --
      Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
    2. Re:Why can't Apple buy them instead??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Bare with me for a moment.

      Yeah, let's get nekkid!

  21. Sun Ray technology by amirulbahr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Would be interesting to find out what IBMs plans for Sun Ray are. Desktop virtualisation is an area that Sun excels in at the moment.

  22. Big Blue and Sun merging means... by gorb · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Blue Sun

  23. You can't be serious by ZxCv · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... Visual Studio sucks compared to Eclipse when it comes to how user-friendly the tool is.

    Do you actually use both on a regular basis?

    I've honestly never met someone that does that prefers Eclipse.

    I use Visual Studio, XCode, and Eclipse, on a daily basis, and as far as I'm concerned, Visual Studio is just about the only thing Microsoft has ever done right, and beats the hell out of any other IDE I've ever used.

    --

    Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
  24. Re:IBM = No service by rackserverdeals · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Until recently IBM had made orders of magnitude greater contributions to the Open Source community than Sun.

    Prove it. There was an EU study in 2006 that analyzed the corporate contributions to Debian. Sun was the largest with about 4 times the peron months attributed to it than IBM who came in second place.

    That's only what came with Debian and doesn't count open sourcing Solaris or Java or any of the other projects they recently open sourced.

    A different view is this old post from Ben Rockwood that they contribute equally but in different ways. Even if that were true, that's like your rich friend and really really rich friend donating the same amount of money to charity.

    I think IBM gets way too much credit because they got sued by SCO. Remember. IBM didn't come in to save Linux because SCO sued Linux, SCO sued IBM.

    I've switched over to Netbeans a long time ago. One of the reasons I like open source software is because it's free. Doing mainly web development and sometimes swing apps, Netbeans rocks and I don't have to buy any plugins to do what I need.

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    Dual Opteron < $600