“Microsoft and Sun redrew the battle lines in the computing world Friday, with news of a 10-year pact designed to better integrate the leading proprietary Unix and Windows platforms and unifying the rivals against a common enemy–IBM and Linux,” Paula Rooney and Barbara Darrow report for CRN. “During a brief press conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Sun CEO Scott McNealy–megarivals whose companies have battled fiercely in the operating system market for more than 20 years–pledged to make their platforms and respective development tools interoperate.”
Rooney and Darrow report, “The wide-ranging pact calls for seamless interoperability between Windows and Solaris Unix operating systems and Java and .Net development platforms. It also ends Sun’s aggressive antitrust litigation against Microsoft and transfers $1.6 billion of the $55 billion in Microsoft’s war chest to Sun, which has seen its profit margins battered by the growth of Linux on Intel servers.”
“‘The deal is an unholy alliance that spells the end of Sun Microsystems as we know it. This move makes Sun the Apple Computer of the Unix world. Apparently, McNealy thinks the enemy of his enemy–Linux–is his friend. They couldn’t possibly be more wrong,’ said Ron Herardian, CEO of Global System Services, Mountain View, Calif. ‘It’s just an unbelievable disaster for the industry. This won’t stop Linux; it just puts Sun on the losing side of the battle line,'” CRN reports.
Full article here.
“[…] the leading proprietary Unix and Windows platforms […]”
What differentiates “proprietary Unix” and non-“proprietary Unix”? The reason I ask is that, last I heard, Apple was the leading vendor of Unix systems. But that may have been measuring something else…
I’ve known all along that the ONLY reason McNealy bitched so vociferously againt all things M$ – is that HE wanted to be Bill Gates.
Fer’crisakes, he hates M$ Office SO much, that he bought his own. Said that there’d be a Mac version of StarOffice/OpenOffice, any day now.
Yeah, uh huh. Whatever.
And what’s with Java Desktop? Doesn’t it sit on Redhat? I guess your customers being screwed too.
Java is finished.
Scott seems to have a short memory for what happens to ALL of M$’s partners.
Apple’s OS X sits on top of Darwin, an open source variant of BSD Unix. So while OS X is proprietary, the Unix it’s built on is not.
what the hell just happened
Scott Scott Scott..didn’t Mom ever teach you not to sell your soul to the devil?
This is the Saturday Morning News.
“What have I done!” A man’s tortured cry eminating from the San Francisco area was heard around the globe this morning at 11am EST.
Also in the news, Bill Gates’ personal wealth shot up last night to $120 Billion – cash.
Wait i thought april fools was yesterday????
i love it.. whenever MS settles a f-ing court case, it’s usually to the sum of hundreds of milliions of dollars, and the media calls it an alliance, or some damn thing…
MS is paying for its life of crime… there are more court cases coming too.. they don’t make friends..or alliances.. they’re thieves..dragging progress and sucking profits from the uneducated masses
This title should say Microsoft buy’s Sun for 2billion dollars
disaster. better be a late April Fool’s joke.
UNIX itself is proprietary. You can’t sell UNIX systems without licenses. However, there are other UNIX-like system that are using open source license and distribution, e.g. FreeBSD.
IMHO, McNealy is stupid. He knows very well how Microsoft likes to stab their partners in the back and yet he is willing to let Microsoft in. I hope he is wearing armored plate on his back.
Can anybody explain how this news relate to this:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1558059,00.asp?kc=EWNWS033104DTX1K0000599
I thought Sun was gonna sell cheapo desktops, and now this happens…?
There are better phrases in the world than “proprietary UNIX,” but UNIX is such an odd duck (take a look at http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html) that any accurate description would be a few paragraphs long.
OS X has a bunch of different layers, some of which are proprietary and some of which aren’t. The underlying OS, however, is about as non-proprietary as they come–the mach kernal combined with BSD.
A large percentage of OS X isn’t even Mac-orginated–it is NEXTSTEP, even down to the freaking rotating beachball, much of the directory structure, etc.
This has to be April Fools! This can’t be real, can it?
In other news, Apple announces OS X is now available for PCs.
yeah: “makes Sun the Apple Computer of the Unix world”
means first fatazz Bill hosed dumazz Steve, now also gets Beam-me-up-Scotty…
Sun just sold out all Java and Solaris users. He was looking short-term, and with Sun in the red, settled for a decent wad of cash. As rlhamon noted, he sold Sun to M$ for $2 billion (or whatever the amount was). M$ escapes legal action yet again. And this one could’ve done some significant damage too.
Where is the DoJ Anti-Trust Division? Out to lunch, bought by Mr Bill himself. The EU slaps a modest fine on Micro$oftopoly and Sen Bill Frist (R) Majority Leader calls it “anti-american”. The DoJ cries and other “officials” claim it is the start of a trade war. Our Government is not for sale, it has been sold- lock, stock and barrell to the monster of Redmond. Time-Warner, saddled with debt, settles the Netscape lawsuit for pennies on the dollar. Be, closing up shop, settles for a mere pitance. Sun, battered by the cartel-like actions of the Wintel alliance, sells it’s soul to MicroSoftopoly for $2 Billion. SCO, the joke of the UNIX world, uses Micro$oft money to plant “FUD” on the LINUX movement with lawsuits designed to scare the corporate world into the arms of Bill Gates. Microsoft is even now extending it’s tentacles of DRM into Hollywood and the Recording Industry, and this is just the beginning. When Longhorn comes out, DRM will be attached to almost EVERY file and document of whatever type, not just music and video. Guess who will get a license or per use fee off of the content- Micro$oftopoly. How high can you count? That’s what they want- and they have figured out how to buy off corporations and the politicians who run the Government. M$=Evil Incarnate.
I don’t think even unholy alliances deserve a typo in the title… Please fix it. Unless MDN has been “hickified” an’ we’re all’re gohnna hafta start typin’ like ya’ll, too. Shucks, that might just be more work than it’s worth, now, wudn’t it?
“This move makes Sun the Apple Computer of the Unix world.”
This statement has put my brain into some kind of loop. Total freeze. What’s the break command?
And what on Earth does that mean?
There goes the neighbourhood
No wonder Bill Joy left Sun if he knew this was coming.
Nagromme: Yeah, I couldn’t wrap my mind around that statement either.
I thought Apple was already the “Apple Computer of the Unix world” with OS X.
I am lost.
This is the reason Sun wasn’t willing to make JAVA OSS. Who owns Java right now?