[OT] IBM in talks to buy Sun

[Lew]

Yeah, but they could easily freeze development, and cause death by a thousand
cuts.

They could, but do you really think they will?

This may come as a surprise, but IBM does a huge amount of work in Java.

 

[Nigel Wade]

They could, but do you really think they will?

They don't actually need to do anything. Not doing anything (i.e. no
improvements, bug fixes etc) will have the same net result whether by
deliberate policy or just because they're not interested.

I'm only playing devil's advocate here, I'm not saying I believe IBM would go
down this route.

This may come as a surprise, but IBM does a huge amount of work in Java.

I know, but would they be actively interested in moving Swing forward, or just
happy to let it stagnate in its own backwater?

 

[Lew]

I know, but would they be actively interested in moving Swing forward, or just
happy to let it stagnate in its own backwater?

We can speculate until the cows come home.

 

[lord.zoltar]

We can speculate until the cows come home.

Mooo.

 

[Bent C Dalager]

We can speculate until the cows come home.

And as we know, they generally don't come home until Sundown.

Cheers,
Bent D

 

[Nigel Wade]

We can speculate until the cows come home.

We have other concerns.

Our servers are Sun hardware. Our main filestore is a Sun FC RAID with about
14TB of disk. Our backup solution uses a Sun tape library driven by Networker.
Everything is on maintenance contracts with Sun. So of much more pressing
concern to us is if IBM were to buy out Sun would they honour existing Sun
maintenance contracts.

Java and Swing are rather moot.

 

[Mike Schilling]

We have other concerns.

Our servers are Sun hardware. Our main filestore is a Sun FC RAID
with about 14TB of disk. Our backup solution uses a Sun tape library
driven by Networker. Everything is on maintenance contracts with
Sun.
So of much more pressing concern to us is if IBM were to buy out Sun
would they honour existing Sun maintenance contracts.

I've never seen a situation where such contracts weren't honored. You
might even be offered the right to buy N years of maintenance up front
at a significant discount, as a way for IBM to generate revenue to
offset the cost of the takeover.

 

[David Segall]

Our servers are Sun hardware. Our main filestore is a Sun FC RAID with about
14TB of disk. Our backup solution uses a Sun tape library driven by Networker.
Everything is on maintenance contracts with Sun. So of much more pressing
concern to us is if IBM were to buy out Sun would they honour existing Sun
maintenance contracts.

Of course they would. Sun are legally obliged to honour your contracts
and the transfer of ownership to IBM does not alter that obligation.
Anyway, if IBM buy Sun they are really buying their customer base so
they would be extraordinarily stupid to drive that customer base
toward another vendor. At worst, they will make you an "irresistible
offer" to change to IBM's preferred hardware, software and support.
Check your contract with _Sun_ to see if they can coerce you to make a
change.

 

[Larry K. Wollensham]

1. They provide a nice, stable, predictable revenue stream even during
economic downturns. A company facing reduced demand for its products and
services is likely to decide to put off upgrading its servers. On the
other hand, short of bankruptcy, anyone who has already paid for a 14TB
disk farm is going to want to keep it working.

I can get 14TB of disk for about $2500AUD. That's a tenth the cost of a
low-end new car and comparable to a middling-high-end workstation.

That's in the form of separate 1TB disks without RAID, though. I expect*
14TB of RAID will top $10,000. That's still peanuts compared to a big
company's IT budget, and still less than adding one vehicle to their
motor pool.

* I leave the hardware stuff to the hardware guys and do Java
development here, so there may be something I don't know here.

 

[John B. Matthews]

I can get 14TB of disk for about $2500AUD. That's a tenth the cost of
a low-end new car and comparable to a middling-high-end workstation.

That's in the form of separate 1TB disks without RAID, though. I
expect* 14TB of RAID will top $10,000. That's still peanuts compared
to a big company's IT budget, and still less than adding one vehicle
to their motor pool.

* I leave the hardware stuff to the hardware guys and do Java
development here, so there may be something I don't know here.

You elided point 2:

Your car dealer makes money on the sale; they make more on the
maintenance; IBM understands this.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

I would find it interesting if AWT was replaced with SWT....

though I doubt that would ever happen ...

That would kill Swing, so it would not happen !

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

That's also true of Swing; the difference is that the system-specific
Swing jars come with the JRE.

I think the important point is that they must be available with any
Java implementation claiming version 1.2 or higher compatibility.

SWT only supports what they want to support.

And that is currently Windows, Linux, MacOS X, AIX, Solaris and HP-UX .

Which is reasonably good but not complete.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Unless things have change a lot in the past 8 years, Netbeans is
developed and maintained almost entirely by Sun employees. If they go
away, so does Netbeans.

It does not need to.

Users can take over.

That is supposed to be one of the advantages of open source.

And with an IDE they have some flexibility regarding pace.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

read Axelrod's the Evolution of Cooperation.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/01...mp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0140124950

I assume that must have been a joke.

You can not in general assume 26 has any magic meaning in this regard.

And what we do know is that besides a number of suppliers, then the
products must be fully interchangeable.

That is not the case for most IBM and SUN products.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

They don't actually need to do anything. Not doing anything (i.e. no
improvements, bug fixes etc) will have the same net result whether by
deliberate policy or just because they're not interested.

I'm only playing devil's advocate here, I'm not saying I believe IBM would go
down this route.


I know, but would they be actively interested in moving Swing forward, or just
happy to let it stagnate in its own backwater?

It could be a problem.

It has always been SUN driving desktop Java.

IBM, Oracle, BEA, JBoss etc. are more interested in server side stuff.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

We have other concerns.

Our servers are Sun hardware. Our main filestore is a Sun FC RAID with about
14TB of disk. Our backup solution uses a Sun tape library driven by Networker.
Everything is on maintenance contracts with Sun. So of much more pressing
concern to us is if IBM were to buy out Sun would they honour existing Sun
maintenance contracts.

Of course they would.

They are most likely legally bound by the contracts.

You can bet on that IBM are very interested in getting your money.

IBM has a pretty good history of supporting stuff.

On the other hand when you need to replace something in X years,
then the friendly sales guy may have some brochures in IBM blue instead
what you are used to !

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

I can get 14TB of disk for about $2500AUD. That's a tenth the cost of a
low-end new car and comparable to a middling-high-end workstation.

That's in the form of separate 1TB disks without RAID, though. I expect*
14TB of RAID will top $10,000. That's still peanuts compared to a big
company's IT budget, and still less than adding one vehicle to their
motor pool.

* I leave the hardware stuff to the hardware guys and do Java
development here, so there may be something I don't know here.

Enterprise hardware is different than consumer hardware.

Often 10 times more expensive.

(a little bit faster and a little bit more reliable !)

Usually price lists are not available at the Web, but Google
managed to find:
http://www.e-business.com/sun/sun6540.html

Arne

 

[Larry K. Wollensham]

You elided point 2

That's because I wasn't responding to point 2.

 

[Mike Schilling]

It does not need to.

Users can take over.

"Can" isn't "will". And a big complex codebase is awfully difficult to
support once the expertise goes away. Especially one that (again if things
haven't changed much in the past eight years) is barely maintainable even by
those experts.

That is supposed to be one of the advantages of open source.

And with an IDE they have some flexibility regarding pace.

There is that.

 

[Larry K. Wollensham]

Enterprise hardware is different than consumer hardware.

Often 10 times more expensive.

(a little bit faster and a little bit more reliable !)

Sounds not worth it to me. There are now consumer RAID systems, which
often allow any (so long as all are identical) drives to be used in
them. They'll be reliable enough. Maybe you'll have to replace a drive
in the array a bit more often, but if those drives are a *lot* cheaper
the savings will add up and add up.

This is why IBM and Sun are in talks to possibly merge; the high-end
hardware market is shrinking, being attacked from below by commodity
microprocessors and drives and similar hardware, cheap and parallelizable.

Both (or the result of any merger) will eventually have to shift to a
more service-oriented business, supporting hardware and software and
providing cloud computing services. Give away the software, sell cheap
hardware at thin margins (or even at a loss), and sell lucrative support
contracts and cloud services.

The evolution towards this strategy is dictated by the price pressures
generated by Moore's Law, which makes any given potency of hardware
become cheap given enough time, and also drives the per-copy cost of
software all the way to zero with cheap storage media and bandwidth.
It's no coincidence the rise of the Internet was accompanied by the
collapse of software and music and other prices. (1990 -- cheapest
full-featured office suite, $159 or so; 2009, $0 (OpenOffice.org); 1990
-- cheapest you could get a song about $8 if available as a single, $16
if not; 2009, $0.99 at iTunes, and $0 if the artist gives it away (or
you pirate it). And a lot are giving it away -- Radiohead and Trent
Reznor recently made headlines doing so, and by actually making money by
doing so.)