---
title: "Note to IBM and Sun: Why not collaborate on OSS, Get over it?"
date: 2005-06-15T23:49:17Z
modified: 2005-06-15T23:49:17Z
permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/note-to-ibm-and-sun-why-not-collaborate-on-oss-get-over-it/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
wpid: 253
categories:
  - Uncategorized
timestamp: 2005-06-15T23:49:17Z
tags:
  - Uncategorized
---

So [IBM forked OpenOffice](http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/000643.html), and now its using [Roller for internal blogging](http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blog_comments.jspa?blog=396&entry=83786&ca=drs-bl), but gives no credit to Sun, and so runs an old version of the code. Another fork in progress? Surely credit where its due.

What Irving said – [its all about collaboration](http://irvingwb.typepad.com/blog/2005/05/the_essence_of_.html#more). Isn’t it? If “the essence of open source is collaboration” why don’t you do some with Sun?

Open source is a mindset not just a set of licences. We’d all benefit if IBM and Sun started collaborating, and stopped sniping. A good start would be for IBM to contribute some resource to [Solaris on POWER](http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/power_pc/;jsessionid=13910DD8925EB61C785A5839B890BFBB). Hey – if you can outperform AMD maybe Sun would consider a deal, now SPARC classic is under the cosh (just ask Sun kernel developers what their favoured platform is… i betcha AMD is the answer you get, [forthcoming CMT work notwithstanding](http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&sub=mtcosmos&url=http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/06/12/Threads)).

I know some customers would like to see Solaris on POWER – and [Bladecenter is one obvious play](http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/000565.html).

I dont just want to ding IBM though. I am an equal opportunities rock chucker, a disloyal oppositionist. Sun – its time to start thinking about some kind of rapprochment with [Eclipse](http://www.eclipse.org/). At least answer its calls. I am not recommending you give up on [Netbeans](http://www.netbeans.org/). On the contrary Netbeans is good stuff. [The Long Tail shows us that rich ecologies and niches are good places to be](http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/000364.html). Netbeans is potentially a cool situated software play, but Eclipse is all about frameworks and corporate IT discipline.

Eclipse will be a lifecycle platform in your customers’ shops whether you like or not, and you need to deal with that. Are you really going to ring fence yourself from Borland, CA, Macromedia, SAP, and WebSphere? Your cost of acquisition will be much higher than your competitors if you don’t have some solid Eclipse integration points. IBM can buy and integrate a small firm within days of closing a deal if, as is increasingly the case, the target built to Eclipse. Higher merger and acquisition costs in a consolidating industry – that’s bad news. And besides – Eclipse is no longer an IBM play, its an industry play.

Here are two great companies that are strong innovators. From the outside it is absurd that Sun can work with Microsoft but not with IBM. It’s a maturing industry isn’t it?