Sun: Microsoft Deal Isn't Anti-Linux

Sun's deal with Microsoft last week was not an anti-Linux maneuver, but rather intended to broaden "interoperability and choice for our customers," said John Fowler, Sun Chief Technology Officer for Software, on Wednesday.

"The agreement with Microsoft is about interoperability and choice for our customers, not about battling Linux or open source," Fowler said in an e-mail interview with Linux Pipeline. "Sun recognizes that mixed environments are a reality and Sun is investing to make customers successful with Sun products in a mixed environment."

In a surprising team-up, Microsoft and Sun said they plan to drop several years of litigation, and to cooperate on achieving interoperability between their respective technologies. Microsoft is also paying Sun $1.95 billion, which Sun badly needs. Pundits have said the deal is anti-Linux, but Fowler said that's simply not true.

Fowler wrote:

"To portray Sun as anti-Linux and anti-open source is plain and simply wrong. In fact, outside of the University of California at Berkeley, Sun is the largest contributor of open source code on the planet, and will continue to contribute to the community. Sun is as committed to the open source community as ever and will continue to provide engineering support for Apache, Mozilla, Gnome, Grid, OpenOffice, JXTA, OSDL, etc."Furthermore, to say that Sun is anti-Linux is a fundamental misconception of Sun's business model. Our business model provides customers with choice- and Linux is one of them. Linux is the base platform for our Java Desktop System and we'll continue to re-sell Linux on our x86 hardware."

We asked: "Can you drill down a little further on the technologies to be shared between Microsoft and Sun? In the technologies listed in the press release, which do you see as most critical? Which currently have the most incompatibilities? The press release seemed to be a list of goals. How do you plan to achieve those goals? How will you be assigning staff to cooperate on these issues?"

Fowler responded: "Please understand that this agreement has literally just been signed - and it is far too early to answer product or technology questions in detail. It will take in time for both companies to sort out which of their engineering and product strategies might be most impacted by the agreement and when. For now, this all the information we have at this time."