The Circle of Trust

Sun Microsystems and Microsoft announced in April that they have buried the hatchet under a stack of $1.95 billion crisp dollar bills payable to Scott McNealy & Co. They’ll be working closely with each other in a 10-year deal on technology and intellectual property. There’s an additional $450 million for long term patent trading and cross-licensing for Sun. But the same stack of gold that buries the hatchet can topple and crush its new owner.

On the Business Battlefield

Sun says its new partnership will help it compete head-to-head with IBM, Novell, and HP in the enterprise and server markets. Competitors beware! Because Sun may now try to “monetize” its arsenal of software intellectual property (IP). Driven by Microsoft, more litigation appears to be on the horizon for all OSS companies. Already Red Hat is girding to defend itself with its own acquisition of software patents plus a bank balance of more than a billion dollars. Smaller vendors like Sleepycat, Covalent, and ActiveState may have to team together to play in this litigation minefield also.

The Sun-Microsoft deal also changes the hardware playing field. For the past couple of years, Sun has been losing Sparc and Solaris customers to AMD and Intel and not quite knowing what to do about it. Now, while betting on the Microsoft ticket, Sun has at the same time trashed its own hardware product future by canceling its next generation UltraSparc processor. Instead of designing its own gear, Sun has new deals with Fujitsu and AMD. One less competitor equals one more customer for the hardware vendors.

But the deal’s changes to the software landscape will make the biggest headlines – Microsoft vs. Open Source. A nightmare prospect is that Sun can now become another SCO fighting Open Source. Sun has warned that it could use its arsenal of software patents for lucrative royalties. The Open Source community may be an open target for Microsoft’s new sock-puppet.

Sun no longer poses a threat to Microsoft. So what about Java, currently being promoted by IBM and Oracle. If Java becomes Java.Net, what happens to open standards and interoperability. Sun’s very own killer app – the Linux based Java Desktop System (JDS) set to compete against Microsoft Windows may be weakened. Sun’s Open Source investments – OpenOffice.org, JXTA.org, SunSource.net, NetBeans.org, Gnome, KDE, Java components and JDS may now all be threatened.

So has Sun swayed over to the proprietary side to see if it can make it? The idea of giving up an obsolete proprietary business model and going for Open Source was apparently less attractive than going with Microsoft.

During the press conference after the agreement, both Microsoft and Sun’s emphasis on intellectual property and patent rights marked the formation of a proprietary software brigade sounding the war cry against Linux and Open Source. Microsoft CEO, Ballmer said “they were united with Sun in their common interest to protecting IP rights and patents in a new era of software development”. This direct shot against Open Source signaled the beginning of the battle of culture - using intellectual property as a weapon against Open Source as a philosophy and business model.

On the Global Stage

The impact of Sun’s truce with Microsoft soon will be felt globally. The European Union’s (EU) penalty of $613 million against Microsoft may be dropped or seriously knobbled since Sun was one of the major companies who had lobbied the EU against Microsoft’s monopolistic practices.

Worldwide opinions have been mixed. Interestingly, many think this alliance has the potential to be catastrophic for Sun. Some, like Red Hat, have rolled a positive spin that the deal makes Linux and Open Source an even-more viable alternative. Linus Torvalds has remarked that it reflects two hurting vendors licking each other’s wounds, rather than a battle cry against Linux and Open Source.

Battle cry or whimper, the sound is not music to the ear of the Open Source community.