Sun setting?
So, given the facts that are available about the Sun deal with SCO, why aren't Linuxites claiming that Sun is somehow promoting FUD in a quest for global domination the way they claim Microsoft is? Could it be that properly licensing software is simply business as usual?
I guess it is a little harder to get people to rally against a company that looks like it might be on the verge of failing anyway. Sun certainly looks like they are in some trouble. Some interesting figures from a Computerworld survey do not paint a pretty picture. Do the math: Sun has the largest marketshare of Unix deployed (68%). Almost half surveyed (42%) say that Unix is becoming less important in their operations over the next five years in favor of Linux and Windows. So, even if the move away from Sun is less than proportional to the general move away from Unix, that does not bode well for market growth.
I wouldn't count Sun out completely, but since they have never been able to make money from Java (and are losing control over the direction of Java to IBM in any event), proprietary hardware market is all but dead and the Unix OS market is in decline they will need to come up with something else fast.