Comment by pjmlp
2 months ago
Which many keep forgetting is that there was no one else wanting to acquire Sun, IBM did an offer that was shortly thereafter withdrawn, and that was it.
Sun would have died, everything completely lost among creditors and that would be it, end of story.
I don't think that's true. Oracle just came in with clearly higher price then anybody else was willing to even consider.
They could also have fired a lot of people and likely survived. But the CEO clearly had no interest in that path.
One great thing about historical fact is that anyone is able to check them, including interviews with key figures.
I am using computers since 1986.
Ironically, not only are you entirely wrong on the facts themselves, but the historical record in this case is incredibly (and unusually) crisp: the Merger Proxy Statement that Sun had to file with the SEC[0] has, in accordance with Delaware law, the full narrative of the acquisition.
In the "Background of the Merger" section of that document, there is an incredibly detailed (and interesting!) story of three companies: Party A, Party B, and Oracle. (As was well-known at the time, Party A is IBM and Party B is HP.) As that narrative makes clear (and contrary to your assertion), it was Sun that rejected IBM's definitive agreement, not the other way around. You can certainly argue that IBM's acquisition of Sun would have failed to complete for other reasons (regulatory and so on) -- but your assertion that "IBM did an offer that was shortly thereafter withdrawn" is simply (and demonstrably) wrong.
[0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/709519/0001193125091...
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Google could have bought Sun for less than they wound up paying in a decade of legal fees anyways over Android Java.
Indeed, which is why I am the opinion they had nothing to complain about.
However given their track record designing programming languages, thankfully that did not happen.
Actual shout out to Oracle inexplicably moving Java forward a ton while also not strangling it with fees and suing their own customers. Wonder if there's a story of some genius, unsung internal salesman who made that happen.