September 11, 2007 4:46 PM PDT
Sun, Microsoft to announce expanded partnership
Sun Microsystems and Microsoft are planning to announce a broader pact on Wednesday, the companies said in a news alert late Tuesday.
Microsoft and Sun "will hold a teleconference to discuss an expanded agreement between the two companies," they said in a media alert. On the press conference call are slated to be John Fowler, executive vice president of Sun's systems group and Andy Lees, a corporate vice president in Microsoft's server and tools unit.
It's unclear what the two companies will announce, but the fruits of their initial April 2004 pact certainly have yet to rock the tech world.
Microsoft and Sun representatives declined to comment beyond the news alert.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
#2 A pardon to Microsoft from Sun for Microsoft violating the Java contract and making J++, J#, and later C# loosely based on Java technology.
#3 Solaris and SunOS getting Microsoft Windows features like Windows file sharing, Windows print sharing, SQL Server, ASP.Net support for Apache, more support for WABI the Sun interface that runs Windows software.
#4 Microsoft giving Virtual PC 2008 and above Solaris X86 virtual machine support.
#5 Microsoft working with Novell and Sun to make Mono for Solaris and SunOS to run more Visual Studio application source code with the popular Visual BASIC.Net, Visual C#, Visual C++, Visual J#, and Iron Python language support.
#6 Silverlight client for Solaris and SunOS.
#7 Microsoft works with Sun to put OOXML support in OpenOffice.Org, StarOffice, and other software.
#8 Sun works with Microsoft to develop ODF support for the MS-Office series for Windows and the Mac.
#9 OpenOffice.Org and StarOffice get source code that Microsoft released from MS-Office into an open sourced license to make them more MS-Office compatible.
#10 Microsoft working with Sun to make a version of Internet Explorer for Solaris and SunOS.
- What I expect
- by Urban Terrorist September 12, 2007 3:58 PM PDT
- Not much. Really the two companies haven't a lot in common. Sun is hardware, Microsoft is software. Possibly some more X86 servers will come with Windows Server as an option.
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- Re: What I Expect
- by chuck_whealton September 13, 2007 7:00 PM PDT
- About as much as the Google-Sun pact. Not much of anything...
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(6 Comments)But that's likely all.