IBM Buying Sun?

[kraftman]

My only vision of IBM buying them consists of IBM forking future development of all the interesting Solaris bits (ZFS, DTrace, Crossbow, etc etc) into AIX under their proprietary license and leaving the current versions to rot. Oh, and cancelling Rock and kicking all the architects to the street.

IBM is great contributor to Linux kernel, so I hope they will just release ZFS and DTrace under GPL (rest is not so interesting). Btw. BTRFS and Linux performance counters are coming so ZFS is becoming much less interesting too...

[jadrevenge]

I'm not sure, but then I'm an Optimist and always have been.

I still reckon some of the R&D in Rock could be used, even if Rock is dead. Assuming that IBM will keep PowerPC.

I'd like to think they'll still support Solaris (It'd be difficult to stop OpenSolaris now) I'm not sure if they have the ability to re license all the technology in OpenSolaris, but the Sun license isn't incompatible with AIX ...

[joffe]

My only vision of IBM buying them consists of IBM forking future development of all the interesting Solaris bits (ZFS, DTrace, Crossbow, etc etc) into AIX under their proprietary license and leaving the current versions to rot. Oh, and cancelling Rock and kicking all the architects to the street.

[jadrevenge]

or HP ... "HP Invent"? (Unless you happen to work from them in design, then you find out that you don't have a job because HP no longer do R&D)

IBM was gonna be a sound owner to ride out the recession ... Even though I'd prefer an independent Sun (which aint gonna happen under the Shwartzeneger!)

[joffe]

Oh well.

At least it isn't Apple trying to snatch them.

[jadrevenge]

It's a good job this isn't eBay, otherwise you can get negative feedback for that

[lordmozilla]

I got told that ibm retracted their bid, but that it would probably be back.

[jadrevenge]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/06/ibm_sun_deal_breakdown/

And from the guy in my office who still owns Sun shares, the shareholders have said they want more money, and IBM have told them to get stuffed ...

So this is off.

[deanjo]

looks like this could be likely :

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...ed-snaffle-sun

Heh, inquirer articles should always have a * on the quote saying

* story may be full of bullshit if originating from inquirers "reliable sources"

However with the NYT breaking the news there is more then likely some credibility to it.

Back on topic, I can see IBM killing solaris and GPL'ing it's worthwhile assets (zfs, dtrace, etc).

[lordmozilla]

looks like this could be likely :

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/650/1051650/ibm-poised-snaffle-sun