Robert Pogson

There is news that IBM is in talks with SUN Microsystems about a sale. SUN is not a pure GNU/Linux play by any means but they are a huge part of the FLOSS community:

• MySQL
• OpenOffice
• JAVA
• OpenSolaris

to name a few big parts they play. IBM is a huge investor in FLOSS because it is what IBM’s customers want. Such a move could bolster FLOSS on servers and desktops and the cloud… It is all good and it is nothing to do with that other OS.

There have been many announcements of layoffs of employees in the economic downturn. Might we see some mergers to bring together compatible/complementary companies to provide diversification with fewer staff per unit of production? The longer the downturn, the more likely that is. Capital is scarce so firms needing new capabilities may absorb it rather than purchasing it. As long as this does not harm competition, the world can benefit from this if it keeps good companies going. SUN has had difficulty making money but they have made some brilliant developments in hardware and software. IBM knows how to sell/move stuff. It should work for those two.

On the FLOSS side of things, what mergers might make sense? There are fewer reasons to merge for economic reasons but cross-fertilization is another matter. We have seen the relationship between Edubuntu and Ubuntu change this year. Could we see distros with similar packaging cooperate more? Could Debian and Ubuntu get together somehow? The differences in personalities of the two organizations make that difficult even though they share a lot of code.

We have seen some mixed signals from Novell about how SUSE is doing. Could they be acquired by M$, for instance? As M$’s business model fails, something like that could make sense, but there is no way their stock-holders will let go of the old model any time soon. Could RedHat and SUSE merge? RedHat and SUSE are so different even though they may share very similar customers… Would the world be a better place with them working together instead of fighting? Would IBM look at RedHat if M$ acquired Novell? UnitedLinux fizzled. Could a new edition spring forth now that SCO is dead?

Hardware makers are suffering. I would expect some mergers in RAM/storage in this situation. We saw Seagate/Maxtor. Are there others that make sense? Probably the oversupply of RAM could re-shape the industry. How much RAM does the world need? A lot less if the world goes to the cloud or thin client/server computing. Perhaps some FABs will close because Moore’s Law means we do not need to plug as many sockets to get the job done. Vista tried to save them but even it could not.

Makers of motherboards are in for a change. The size of motherboards must drop the way Moore’s Law has been working. When was the last time, you saw expansion slots plugged? I made a few multi-seat thick clients with five video cards. Mini-ATX is good enough for most people. That means more thin clients/netbooks and less tonnage of e-waste, not a bad thing but it does not take as many people and as large a facility to work with such tiny equipment. Everyone has to change. Change is good.

What about USB 3? Does that change everything? It could. Will investment in the new technology be made in the downturn? Yes. Everyone will fight for their share of the shrinking market. Consumers will win. Businesses that held on to old technology in the face of Vista will win. When they do upgrade, it will be to vastly superior stuff and probably with a lot more GNU/Linux. It is all good.