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77 Comments
- stealthspc, on 03/19/2009, -4/+23I don't get this article. IBM buying Sun makes perfect sense. They both are in the web business. And they are competing companies.
- bobcrotch, on 03/19/2009, -1/+20Using synergy in a blog entry 3 times = doing it wrong
- garionw, on 03/19/2009, -7/+2168 Diggs, 1 Comment and on the front page.
I'm starting to think these Power Users may be paying digg for the privilege. - rxbudian, on 03/19/2009, -2/+15I'm guessing IBM thinks that it's better to buy Sun before another company bought it and use it to compete against IBM.
Sun probably leaked it to the news so the buyout price goes up because of increased interest - zippy757, on 03/19/2009, -0/+12...I'm sure the top brass at IBM and Sun are scanning DIGG for the best opinions on the subject that money can buy....
- rrife, on 03/19/2009, -3/+14IBM being one of the largest users of Java technology isn't a good enough reason?
- NKr1pt, on 03/19/2009, -5/+14sorry to disappoint you, jaytea90.
Java has its share of problems (as all languages do), but overall it is a pretty good programming language and it has a huge community which boasts it to new innovations.
Think Apache, JBoss, and other major frameworks like Spring and Hibernate, originally built on Java that proved to be very useful and are now ported to the .NET platform - KibibyteBrain, on 03/19/2009, -2/+9They both offer similar services and therefore could double up on part of their staff = less overall expense for the same amount of business = good. Plus, this would eliminate IBMs only other major competition in big iron, picking up all the very profitable legacy users who pay for very expensive support. This would also allow IBM more influence over the direction of Java which is very beneficial for a company doing the business apps on Linux thing.
- lohphat, on 03/19/2009, -0/+6They bought it to acquire Java and ZFS and to finally close the books on the SPARC platform.
Elimination of potential competitors, no matter how out-dated, is always a goal. - Xalorous, on 03/19/2009, -0/+61. IBM did not make this announcement, and they haven't bought Sun.
2. The price is too high to chop shop Sun.
3. Why buy Java when they can use it free?
4. ZFS, maybe, but it would be easier and much cheaper for them to throw their weight behind an alternate. - specialK16, on 03/19/2009, -2/+8They should. Popularity, controversiality, etc.
- ttamshadbolt, on 03/19/2009, -3/+8nice description
- inactive, on 03/19/2009, -6/+11I think Sun's low stock price and lack of profitability makes it not a good buy. Java is a great programming language though.
- cleric04, on 03/19/2009, -3/+8Can I just buy ZFS?
- pearcewg, on 03/19/2009, -1/+6I deliberately left Java in 1997, vowing never to return.
12 years on, and I'm still happy with my decision. - idontlikeyou2, on 03/19/2009, -1/+6@ 5plic3r
There are programmers that knows different language have different area of strength and weakness and there are cry babies. - PottSie2, on 03/19/2009, -1/+6The Solaris SPARC platform is a godsend. Please IBM, if you do buy it, don't fk it up.
- enantiodromia, on 03/19/2009, -1/+5don't forget about MySQL. that would be a nice jewel to own.
- 350Zed, on 03/19/2009, -0/+4Quiet, please!
I can't focus on synergizing my paradigms within my ecosystem with all that racket! - phramus, on 03/19/2009, -0/+4There are more than twice the Java jobs as there are C++ jobs. Java may be crap, but it's big crap. Sun is in all the back offices.
- skyshark88, on 03/19/2009, -2/+5Really IBM the hardware manufacturer owning the most stable open source virtual machine program and fastest on the market today sound like a bad idea...
- Pfhor, on 03/19/2009, -0/+3Depending on your aims, it could make sense to acquire ZFS with the intent of relicensing it (among other things).
The GPL is incompatible with the CDDL, which is why it is necessary for ZFS to be supported outside of the kernelspace on Linux. - inactive, on 03/19/2009, -1/+4Buying something gives you more power to control more stuff.
Makes sense to me. - corrosion, on 03/19/2009, -0/+3The only sense would be to "destroy" some of the technologies of Sun, like their hardware architectures and maybe some closed-source software. Anyway, it would be very bad to the industry to lose a player like Sun who bringed us technologies like Java, ZFS and others...
(Sorry for my English) - BashiBazouk, on 03/19/2009, -0/+3I think the problem with sun is they create really innovative and cool stuff on both the hardware and software sides but are really bad at selling/marketing it.
If IBM can take a fairly hands off approach to sun and keep the innovation going and really only exert control when it comes time to sell the product, a buy out could work out well. - Xalorous, on 03/19/2009, -1/+4You didn't read the article. Sun has very little that IBM doesn't already have.
- BitSlicer, on 03/19/2009, -1/+4I have seen many of these mergers between HW vendors. One of the main reasons to buy another computer company is not for the product line but for the technology that they own AND for the maintenance contracts that they own. The on-going revenue stream is worth a LOT more money than the on-going product sales. The marginal products will be dropped, the high profit stuff will be milked for all its worth 'cause that is where the money is made. Raise the price of the maintenance contracts and it becomes a gold mine for many years.
This also provides a list of customers that can be provided a migration package to AIX via consultation services, another revenue stream.
As an IBM stock holder it works for me. - Peterix, on 03/21/2009, -0/+2Sun has Open Office. IBM has their Lotus Symphony office suite based on Open Office (which is also pretty nice). MS has their Office. By buying out Sun, IBM gets more control over OOO (Sun programmers) and some VERY nice technologies including ZFS and VirtualBox. This is an important step to make sure OOO doesn't rot and a stepping stone for Linux on corporate workstations.
Makes perfect sense to me. - rnawky, on 03/19/2009, -0/+2http://www.stopgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07 ...
- MrViklund, on 03/19/2009, -2/+4I don't want to lose SUN as a separate company so I hope this never happen. We lose SUN for a little bit of IBM growth.
You can argue for any type of merger with any company. If you want it to go through, it makes sens for you. I don't want this to go through. I think it would be bad for the industry and we would lose SUN which is very valuable and undervalued by the stock market as a stand alone company. A merger would do nothing for the industry and I'm sure allot of talent would quit SUN in the process. - Xalorous, on 03/19/2009, -0/+2Keep in mind (or read the article and see for yourself), IBM never made this announcement. More than likely this is free advertising through hype. IBM is not a good fit, but the article mentions several others who are. Sun is shopping themselves around and if they create a buzz this way, people will notice.
- pinchduck, on 03/20/2009, -0/+2Right. In the above scenario, Lenovo is the foreign competitor who would buy Sun to gain access to enterprise markets. It's just a theory and an example, and no one is saying that Sun isn't American. As of right now.
- Sfear, on 03/19/2009, -0/+2If you think this doesn't make sense...
Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does NOT MAKE SENSE!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/08/0330 ... - stealthspc, on 03/19/2009, -3/+5Agreed.
- alent1234, on 03/19/2009, -0/+2This makes perfect sense for IBM. Sun is into cloud computing as a service. IBM is into services and running data centers. With Sun they can virtualize all the data centers they run and save a lot of money for themselves and their customers.
For the rest they will get a nice patent and tech portfolio they can merge with their own products and kill Sun's products. Sparc, Solaris, Java and a bunch of others. Just like when Compaq bought DEC and HP bought Compaq.
The big loser is MS. Office is still a cash cow and IBM will now own OpenOffice and they will migrate their customers to it.
I bet IBM leaked this news on purpose just to scare potential Sun customers from buying anything new - wikinerd, on 03/20/2009, -1/+3Have you heard of "write once run anywhere"? It's way better that way.
- christopherRB, on 03/19/2009, -0/+2"It makes no sense".... Welcome to corporate America.
- ilgaz, on 03/21/2009, -0/+1Just imagine MySql with exact same synthax and usage running happily on IBM mainframes. No lack of developer support, everyone (down to users) knows how mysql works while strange stuff on IBM mainframes aren't.
- lilbitmoreslyk, on 03/19/2009, -2/+3Java adopted its basic syntax from C/C++, the nasty parts that are missing have been built into a lot of what the language does. For example we no longer need to allocate/deallocate memory, this is all done by simple initialization and the Garbage collector. They both share many of the same unary and binary operators. The big difference in why you think C++ code is "ugly" is beacuse they were designed for different purposes. C++ is supposed to be powerful and allow you to manipulate different resources for optimal performance, while Java was designed to be simpler language with high portability and networking. They are both object oriented languages, thus you have a strong similarity in the basic Syntax, but you notice such things as pointer arithmetic. memory management are done for you in Java and not C++ for the very reason that Java is supposed to be simple and portable while C++ is complex and performance oriented.
- ScottyMcBaggs, on 03/19/2009, -0/+1lol, there was no purpose in mind while designing C++, other than 'hey look what I can do'. "What" bjarne did in this case, was take a fat ***** on the legacy of K&R. It's all a ***** afterthought, as you can see immediately from the '++' following the 'C' (the greatest non-OO language in the history of computing). Put K&R next to Bjarne's book, Bjarne's is like at least 5 times bigger, and won't save you any actual programming time. It will actually destroy brain cells, and possibly make you sui/homocidal. Seriously, the language is ***** dangerous.
C++ is a huge, bloated piece of ***** that is not intuitive enough to utilize efficiently in large OO programs. Java is semicolon-terminated and uses curly braces, that's about the only thing it has in common with C or its *****-for-brains bastard son named C++. Java's incredibly intuitive, thus making it actually useful for large OO projects without causing brain hemorrhages, and it's relatively fast. Of course, if Ruby weren't such a horridly slow bastard, it'd be king of OO... - Stegg, on 03/19/2009, -0/+1To a tech journalist who's spent all of a couple of days studying the situation, as opposed to the months/years that corporations spend researching a potential buyout, perhaps it won't make sense.
- ilgaz, on 03/21/2009, -0/+1Well they are breaking records with their POWER6 chips and still, amazingly support PPC970 (G5).
SPARC is a RISC processor too. Why would they fsck it up? In fact, SPARC's future was in question if Sun kept losing money so we can easily say SPARC is saved. - bhuntsbarger, on 03/19/2009, -0/+1it is when you wanna do some insider trading .... stocks doubled in value...
- johnstar, on 03/23/2009, -0/+1It would shut down star office, not that anyone uses it.
- maumac, on 03/25/2009, -0/+1The original comment was about Java as a programming language, not a platform. And in this regard, I also think C# is way better than Java. Which is not much surprising, since C# is basically Microsoft's own Java clone, but created from the ground up years later. We can only expect improvements here.
Having said that, both (LANGUAGES, not platforms) completely suck compared to Ruby/Python =P - ScottyMcBaggs, on 03/19/2009, -0/+1sense: you haz none.
- bitmanx, on 03/19/2009, -0/+1If IBM doesn't then somebody else will like HP..
- ScottyMcBaggs, on 03/19/2009, -0/+1rofl @ "with a 9 gig raid". It's the borat of IT.
- ilgaz, on 03/21/2009, -0/+1If even legendary blue suits of IBM can't ''sell'' OpenOffice to companies, it would be safe to suggest Open Office developers to sit and think what is wrong with it.
Mozilla people did it and you see the result and its amazing success. Firefox. - ilgaz, on 03/21/2009, -0/+1IBM has some amazing filesystems too and in fact, they were already 10 years ahead of anything back in 1970s.
Of course IBM filesystems require a mainframe while ZFS can run down to USB disks.
Java? Isn't IBM responsible for half of the goodies you see on Javaland? Eclipse and SWT just to begin with. -
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