Who is going to buy Sun microsystems?

[Mourouganandame Arunachalam]

Hi,

IBM withdraws $7 Billion offer for Sun Microsystems.... It's good as well as bad. Good for Java professionals and bad for Sun.

Just thinking, who is going to buy Sun Microsystems?

[Joe Ess]

Mourouganandame Arunachalam wrote:
Just thinking, who is going to buy Sun Microsystems?

Woah! I totally derailed this discussion. Let's do this: Humorous suggestions over here in MD, serious discussion in this topic.

[Tim Holloway]

After careful meditation, I've decided that if SOMEBODY has to to it, I'd rather it be Cisco. But that's just the best of a set of bad alternatives.

IBM owns too much of Java already.
Microsoft owns too much of Everything Else and wants to tie it all irretrievably to Windows. Besides MS and Sun hate each other from way back.
Apple? I think too much culture clash.
Oracle - less said, the better.
The original rumors included Citi. Citi shouldn't be buying ANYONE right now. They can't even do well in their own industry.

[Vishwas Hegde]

How about this news!!

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/03/26/oracle_hp_joint_sun_deal/

~Vishwas

[Billy Tsai]

why doesn't Google buy Sun Microsystems?

[Tim Holloway]

Vishwas Hegde wrote:How about this news!!

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/03/26/oracle_hp_joint_sun_deal/

~Vishwas

Well, it's rather old. Besides, getting bought by Compaq/HP didn't do all that much for DEC.

[Mourouganandame Arunachalam]

Tim Holloway wrote:After careful meditation, I've decided that if SOMEBODY has to to it, I'd rather it be Cisco. But that's just the best of a set of bad alternatives.

IBM owns too much of Java already.
Microsoft owns too much of Everything Else and wants to tie it all irretrievably to Windows. Besides MS and Sun hate each other from way back.
Apple? I think too much culture clash.
Oracle - less said, the better.
The original rumors included Citi. Citi shouldn't be buying ANYONE right now. They can't even do well in their own industry.

I vote for Oracle rather.....

[Tim Holloway]

Mourouganandame Arunachalam wrote:

Tim Holloway wrote:After careful meditation, I've decided that if SOMEBODY has to to it, I'd rather it be Cisco. But that's just the best of a set of bad alternatives.

IBM owns too much of Java already.
Microsoft owns too much of Everything Else and wants to tie it all irretrievably to Windows. Besides MS and Sun hate each other from way back.
Apple? I think too much culture clash.
Oracle - less said, the better.
The original rumors included Citi. Citi shouldn't be buying ANYONE right now. They can't even do well in their own industry.

I vote for Oracle rather.....

Do you REALLY want the company that single-handedly kept Java 1.3.8 from going end-of-life for years to own Java?

[Vikram Kohli]

I have seen peple in Java world don't respect Oracle much. May I know the reasons.......

[kurt hanni]

What if no one buys Sun? Will Sun close down, what happens to java...

[Mourouganandame Arunachalam]

I think SUN is seriously looking for good offers to sell, due to various reasons. One of the reason may be its loss in sever market.

[Mourouganandame Arunachalam]

Vikram Kohli wrote:I have seen peple in Java world don't respect Oracle much. May I know the reasons.......

I disagree with this. I respect Oracle, for its strong RDBMS

[PavanPL KalyanK]

why sun is being sold ?

Is it in loss ??

[Mark Herschberg]

Sun is being sold because of declining revenues. I haven't followed it closely but from what i've gathered it's due to lossing share int he server market. Fundamentally Sun is a hardware company. These days companies are buying generic linux boxes or even using cloud systems (which in turn use generic linux boxos). Their workstation market also eroded over the years.

Sun != Java

Here again i haven't paid close attention the last few years but when I last checked Java was overseen by a steering committee made up of a number of companies. This steering committee in turn uses JSR's to advance the Java API's. Multiple companies implement these APIs in their JVM's. Sun is merely one member of the committee (albeit a special one). Sun also owns the Java trademarks.

Either some new company will own Sun, or Sun's assets will be sold off, including the Java trademarks and related rights. Even if "Java" disappears everyone will just start calling it "Jawa" or some other name. There's too much invested in Java software (proprietary, vendors, services) to just let the whole thing stop one day.

--Mark

[Tim Holloway]

Sun reminds me of the old Xerox PARC. They've contributed a lot, but haven't managed to capitalize on it for their own benefit. As a result, they've been slowly circling the drain for years.

Their "iron" business - SPARC servers - has been steadily eroded over the last few years by Intel-based commodity systems. Unlike IBM's mainframes, Sun hasn't been able to demonstrate a clear technical superiority of their equipment over the off-the-shelf architectures. Their software products, which include Solaris, NetBeans, StarOffice, MySQL and Java are not real revenue producers. Solaris is now free in large part because that's the only real price that can compete against Linux (the OS is free, Sun charges for support). StarOffice was given a nominal price simply because if they gave it away, a lot of businesses wouldn't believe it was "real" software - it's only slightly different than the OpenOffice product that is the free version of it. MySQL has its profitable side, but not enough to support everyone else, and as for making money on Java...

Java is not public property. Sun has demonstrated (to Microsoft's pain) that it is in fact the sole owner of what is and isn't Java, insofar as the core language and libraries are concerned, In fact, one of the biggest concerns about a Sun buyout is that whoever ends up owning Java might not be as easygoing about it. Even Sun has their moments, which is why we adopted the CodeRanch domain. Ever so often a Sun lawyer goes on a tear about what's proper use of the "Java" moniker.

[Chris Keene]

I think IBM is still the last, best hope for Sun. My prediction is that the final result of all the testosterone-enhanced posturing will be a deal, much like the Oracle/BEA pas de deux

[Prabhat Gupta]

Finally Sun went into Oracle Hands
Oracle aquisition