Java crowd has mixed views on potential Sun-IBM deal

IDG News Service - IBM's reported interest in buying Sun Microsystems Inc. has Java and open-source community members expressing both hopes and worries about the implications of such a deal for the tools, applications and open-source projects they use every day.

IBM is willing to pay at least $6.5 billion for Sun, according to a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday that cited anonymous sources.

While analysts said a deal would make strategic sense for both companies -- such as by providing a stronger sales channel for Sun's software and a large installed base of Sun server customers for IBM -- some of the talk in the Java world's trenches is not so sunny. One poster to the Java developer community site Javalobby expressed worry that IBM would not expend much effort supporting Sun's NetBeans integrated development environment (IDE) and would instead favor the IBM-backed Eclipse tool kit.

"What would be the point of having two IDEs by the same company? Especially in these economic times," said a user with the handle "WaiHo." "Day 2 after IBM takes over Sun, it announces that 'because of budget needs,' they will drop NetBeans, as well as every other product for which IBM has an alternative (i.e., with which IBM has been competing)."

Another poster, "Jexenberger," speculated that products in danger could include the GlassFish application server -- which has a counterpart in IBM's WebSphere -- and even commercial support for Sun's open-source MySQL database. "Ugh, now they'll start punting [IBM] DB/2 as the commercial option."

But others predicted a better outcome if IBM buys Sun.

"When I think about how this could impact Java, I can only see positives," said poster James Sugrue. "A company such as IBM could inject more money into Java development. When I think about the company who gave us Eclipse having more of an investment in Java, it's difficult to see any negatives."

And Java architect Fabrizio Giudici pointed out in a blog post that Sun's open-source products have "excellent momentum in their related communities" and that the code could be forked into new projects.

"This could mean more (unpaid) work for us at the beginning, but market opportunities often arise when you don't expect," he said.

Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady echoed the notion. While open-source projects do "depend on funded employees ... the fact is that [forking] exists as an option, whereas with a closed-source project, you're just out of luck."

Overall, though, the Sun community should not be terribly concerned that IBM would phase out Sun's software products, according to The 451 Group analyst Matt Aslett. "While the software portfolios' overlap, this should not be an issue for IBM, as the company could use Sun's products to drive revenue generation," he said via e-mail. And since IBM "already has multiple operating systems and databases in its portfolio, enabling customer choice would be the ongoing mantra."