IBM is courting Sun

It looks as though IBM might buy Sun. See IBM in Talks to Buy Sun in Bid to Add to Web Heft. As soon as the news broke, speculation started about what it might mean for Java and Sun’s other technologies.

History suggests that deals like this come in two kinds. In the first, your rival has something missing from your portfolio, so you buy the rival. In the second, you want to get rid of a competitor, so you buy it and take all or part of its market share. Given IBM’s portfolio, the first doesn’t look likely, at least as the main motive.

That could mean IBM would stop investing in Sun’s technologies. It’s hard to predict, but it probably wouldn’t make sense for IBM to have two IDE platforms such as NetBeans and Eclipse. Fans of Sun technologies such as GlassFish, NetBeans and JavaFX might take comfort in the fact that most are open source and would survive a deal. They probably would survive. Unfortunately, cutting off IBM’s investment would likely bring their development to a standstill and ultimately condemn them to a slow demise.

Online discussions already have plenty of speculation and commentary on the deal. Hardly anyone seems pleased at the prospect of IBM in particular buying Sun. Sun behaved like an innovator, while IBM is seen as a rigid, slow-moving giant, at least that’s my impression. One theory is that U.S. antitrust authorities might put a stop to the whole thing. I’ll end on a cheery note. Tremble, the future is uncertain. In reality it’s probably less dire, since nothing has been agreed yet.