If IBM does acquire SUN, and the rumors on the street suggest that it will, what will IBM do about Solaris? Let’s look at some of the options.

By this time next week, IBM will have bought Sun at a cut-rate price. I'd long thought Sun was going to down for the count, so the news that IBM was moving in didn't surprise me. What happens next though?

IBM still looking for the breakthrough deal with Big Red mond
"JAVA was just too powerful for us to have," confessed Bob Satire, "so we decided to pursue a once-in-a-lifetime contract opportunity with Microsoft by buying a poor-but-functional copy of its key technology - called Perro - along with its parent company.

MICROSOFT'S "academic kickbacks" are no news to us. Microsoft pays hundreds of dollars to professors who secretly promote its products (and bullies those who don't). Microsoft was doing almost exactly the same thing to throw fire at the GNU GPL version 3. The company from Redmond routinely pays academia to promote its agenda and here is the very latest example which comes from the New York Times.

The news broke this morning, March 18th, that IBM is talking to Sun about buying the company. Sources from both companies tell me that such a deal is in the works and it may be completed as early as this week.

Antitrust exhibits shows Microsoft's attitude towards competition

IBM's Savio Rodrigues sees a lot of benefits from proprietary technology companies like Cisco "leeching" off open-source communities to boost profits and drive top-line revenue growth. I'm inclined to agree, at least with his assessment of IBM's involvement in open source.

Has the time come at last to live a Microsoft-free life? That thought crossed my mind yesterday morning as I read an announcement from IBM that (with Canonical Inc.) it was offering a new Linux-based virtual desktop suite that, at user prices as low as $59, would compete directly with the iconic Microsoft Office.