Re: how is IBM i affected by acquisition of Sun?

[Steve Richter <stephenrichter@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 10:18 PM, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > From: Hans Boldt
> > The real challenge for IBM will to maintain its street cred in the
> > open source community.
>
> Without competition from SUN, I don't see IBM trying very hard to appeal to the open source community.
> It seems that IBM's only real competitor in the "managed code" space (as Mr. Richter likes to call platforms like
> Java and .Net), would be Microsoft.  I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Microsoft to release a F/OSS version
> of .Net.

Mono and Moonlight look to be very impressive open source
implementations of C# and silverlight.
After watching this interview of the person behind those technologies,
my judgement of the importance of java dropped a notch.
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/Miguel-de-Icaza-Moonlight/

MSFT is doing incredible work on all fronts.
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/This+Week+On+Channel+9/This-Week/
there is no reluctance to fund different technologies like asp.net,
silverlight, WPF, windows forms, ajax, azure, ...  and let them
compete in the marketplace. They have brilliant programmers like Scott
Guthrie and Anders Hejlsberg, who contrary to the IBM way, are
decision makers for their products.
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Expert-to-Expert-Anders-Hejlsberg-The-Future-of-C/

the eternal hope is that IBM will adapt the MSFT approach, starting with IBM i.