The combination of IBM and such open-source technologies as OpenSolaris, StarOffice and MySQL could mean a richer, happier open-source community.There is a lot of overlap for IBM and Sun in the areas of open source and operating systems, and in this case, that's a good thing. Solaris would give IBM a better Unix operating system than IBM's AIX, and the deal could enable IBM to take advantage of the significant open-source work that Sun has done.Whenever a major acquisition—like the currently rumored IBM
acquisition of Sun Microsystems—occurs, attention immediately turns to
product and technology overlap.
Too much overlap, and the deal doesn't make sense. The conventional wisdom
here seems reasonable enough, but we must pay attention to the way that open-source
development and licensing models—to which both Sun and IBM
adhere for a significant portion of their strategies—change our conventional
overlap equations.
For starters, there's the IBM/Sun Unix
operating system overlap, which ZDNet's Dana Gardner saw fit to dismiss in
three curt words, "Unix? IBM
has one."
My colleague Jim
Rapoza set it aside almost as swiftly: "And, let's face it: Both of
these OSes are pretty much legacy systems now—or are well on their way to that
status."
I'd say that in the case of IBM's AIX,
Rapoza is correct in assigning the legacy label. Solaris, on the other hand, is
very much alive, with compelling stories around functionality (DTrace, Zones,
ZFS, Crossbow), hardware platform support (x86 as a first-class platform) and
community engagement (OpenSolaris) that put Solaris in a totally different
class than AIX.
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