IBM + Sun = Perfect for open-source monetization

IBM is in talks to acquire Sun Microsystems, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Sun has struggled to revive its financial prospects in the wake of declining interest in its Solaris operating system and associated hardware. Open source has been the big bright spot for Sun, but Sun's ability to recoup hardware losses with free software has been suspect.

CNET News Poll

Should IBM buy Sun?
Big Blue reportedly is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems for $6.4 billion. Should it?

Yes. Sun's products complement IBM's.
Yes. Keep a few assets, and sell the rest as scraps.
No. There are too many product overlaps.
No. Sun brings too many problems.

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IBM could fix that. IBM knows how to make money from software, and it could lend a hard-edged pragmatism to Sun's open-source idealism.

The Journal reports on the culture clash between the two companies, which could complicate the deal. I believe, however, that the conflicting cultures are actually complementary:

A combination would require melding companies with distinct, dissimilar cultures. IBM, an East Coast stalwart that helped invent the computer industry, grew up with a button-down style and a philosophy of delivering what customers want. Sun, which grew up in the go-go environment of the 1980s in Silicon Valley, is an engineering-driven maverick with a record of major innovations that has lately struggled to profit from them.

Let Sun build. Let IBM monetize.

The two companies have fought each other for years, but Sun and IBM bring a range of complementary technologies, product lines, and business strategies to the table. Sun is staking its business on driving sales through open-source adoption. Free software makes sense in this strategy.

IBM, by contrast, has increasingly staked more of its business on driving adoption through open-source software-based sales. Open-source software, which IBM can embed in its products, makes sense in this strategy. IBM actively undermines competitors by seeding open-source projects such as various Apache Software Foundation projects, Linux, and Eclipse. It then sells proprietary add-ons to that open-source software.

In other words, IBM may be exactly what Sun needs to complete its open-source transition. I can't speak to the hardware benefits of such a deal, but in terms of open source, this combination would be a home run.

Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.

[forever4now]

This could be a great boost for Java, since IBM could probably find a way to monetize it, without having to maintain as strict of control as Sun has tried to maintain.

I really hope this deal happens!

[odubtaig]

Don't IBM and Sun have competing, incompatible, versions of Java? Or am I thinking of something else?

[rmgraci]

@odubtaig They do, but I would expect that they merge the best technologies from the two. Good news to IBM software developers everywhere, when it eventually happens. I'm sure it will take a long time, since all of the products that are dependent upon the IBM version will need to transition.

[krosafcheg]

So how on earth do you reconcile AIX and Solaris? One is open source, the other is proprietary. Can't the CDDL license content merge with proprietary code? If so, are we looking at all the ZFS goodness and free UNIX goodness disappearing into the proprietary AIX running on multi-hundred-thousand-dollar mainframes, leaving the CDDL code base to rot/be maintained by that handful of enthusiasts who value ZFS and Solaris above the patchworky Linux and its crappy file systems?

Or do business customers simply not care and are we looking at losing this without anyone so much as batting an eye?

I guess we're stuck waiting for btrfs to actually become production ready some time the next century, unless the maker of this one also decides to murder his wife and bury her in the hill and get incarcerated.

[Maarek Stele]

Sound more like a Hostile Take over.

IBM would SMASH & GRAB leaving MySQL in the dust.

I don't like this one bit, since I use MySQL for alot of my database needs.

[sanjayb]

Yeah IBM knows how to monetize software. They build buggy software on top of open source projects and you are forced to pay millions for support of these products. Try using RAD and see how slow and buggy it is. If not for the splash screen, you wouldn't realize that is built on top of Eclipse.
I hate to think what they would do with Java. Yikes!

[halfNakedPappy]

I'd have to agree. IBM tends to make inferior products and then charge an arm and a leg for them (Websphere anyone?). RAD is a scourge I would not wish upon my worst enemy.

[Renegade Knight]

IBM's Future is in what Sun is doing now. That's why IBM would break it's mold when it comes to acquisitions.

[w0rdwarri0r]

IBM will take all that is good about Sun and completely ruin it. They will kill or ruin Sun's best open source products, such as Netbeans and Glassfish. They will marginalize OpenSolaris and MySql. They'll take Sun's excellent documentation, and replace it with their cryptic help files. They'll re-engineer Sun's products to obfuscate them with (among other things) incomprehensible error messages and specs so bureaucratic they will make ISO's standards look improvised by comparison. They'll make IBM Java the standard and break compatibility with established standards.

The day IBM acquires Sun will be a dark day for Java and open source.

[talawahdotnet]

IBM buying Sun is bad for open source innovation. To turn a phrase that Matt once used in a past life, Sun has already "burned the boats" that carried them from the land of proprietary software and paved a visionary path into the brave new world of open source. The arrival of IBMs majestic proprietary fleet would undo all that hard fought work.

Let Sun innovate with their open source business model:

1) Selling support to the high end of the market.
2) Selling hardware/software appliances that disrupt the proprietary storage and networking markets.
3) Creating a cloud computing platform that is open (open APIs+portable data), enterprise-friendly (public+private clouds) and developer friendly (integrates w/ Virtualbox & Netbeans, runs MySQL and Glassfish).

Come on Matt, I know that being responsible for sales at Alfresco has changed your views on mixing open source and proprietary models, but even you should see the beauty and innovation in Sun's strategy and realize that it doesn't mesh well with IBM. If it makes it any more palatable, Sun probably would have still kept their datacenter management solutions proprietary anyway.

http://blog.talawah.net/2009/03/why-i-dont-want-ibm-to-buy-sun.html

[renaissance303]

IBM will completely destroy the great path Java is currently taking to the Open Source world.

IBM = **** !!
Eclipse = crappy !!
Sun + Solaris + Netbeans + Glassfish + MySQL = Beauty !!

[idfubar]

Wow... nothing but cynicism about the future and IBM's intentions... though it is refreshing to see a column where the posts aren't all questioning Matt's integrity.

= )