Microsoft is paying Sun Microsystems $1.95 billion as part of a deal signed Friday–but Sun could gain as much as $450 million more over the next 10 years through a patent provision in the agreement.
Millions More for Sun from Microsoft Patent Pact?
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Sun needs to show shareholders money is coming in from somewhere, and it isn’t servers. Sun is now occupying half what HP and IBM respectively command in servers. Much less and they will hit a tipping point where even their own customers will treat them as lepers, unwilling to invest in a dead end no matter how deeply discounted.
Things looked bleak for a while there, but this is hardly Death: Solaris will be one of the only non-MS platforms that is interoperable with Windows related technology (along with Apple, but even more so).
Food for thought: I say “Solaris” because I’m not sure where “JDS” fits into this. If Sun keeps up development on JDS (as their customers would like), I wonder what the implications of that would be?
It’s all a matter of licensing for anyone. That means “anyone”. If that doesn’t hold back antitrust lawsuits against MS, I expect Bill Gates to do something really drastic (but I guess that’s another story).
JDS is available on Solaris x86 as well as Linux, so maybe something interesting could happen in that direction.
JDS is available on Solaris x86 as well as Linux, so maybe something interesting could happen in that direction.
Incorrect, JDS *will* be available for Solaris x86, but it isn’t ready yet. I have a strong suspicion that possibly Solaris 10 will have X11-6.7/XORG-STSF and JDS as the default desktop. Lets hope it happens as it will not only create a great desktop for thin clients but also make Solaris easier to manage for those who are not CLI inclined.
I wouldnt call Sun dead, just not in the best fiscal position of this companies career. That being said I dont thing MS will include the best UNIX technologies in LongHorn. Theres nothing special I see with LongHorn yet that would seem to make it all that great, I need to see concrete examples of how its better, besides lets not forget they have no need for UNIX technology on home computers. LongHorn is a Home/Office OS not the Server OS. They released Windows 2003 as their server OS and that doesnt seem to include such things.
Also, what I meant to mention about Sun’s use of MS patents and collaboration: If they keep JDS “Linux” around, and not only Solaris, what are the implications there? A Linux distro that makes use of licensed patents from MS (.NET, Exchange, Active Directory for instance..)? As far Linux distros go, it sounds like sure success (even dominance).
Correct me if I’m reading too much into this.
It has been stated that their will be a Longhorn Server.