Interesting Read Joe. You did a nice job on filling me in on what Microsoft wanted from Sun; "Sun's 64-bit expertise." But I think its not so clear what Sun wants from Microsoft.

Better MySQL interoperability with MS products? Perhaps, but I think that is not a big one for Sun.

Sun is a server company, mostly. It makes and sell servers. Mostly about two thirds of its current servers are PC based and HP, I believe.

Sun is, or was, more like Apple in some ways. It made its own line of computers, the Sparc platform, and its own version of Unix called Solaris. The sales of these Sparc computers is now only about 1/3 of what Sun sells for servers these days. The Sparc only runs Unix and some versions of Linux. Last I looked it cost about $3500 for a Sun Sparc Laptop computer. They are not really marketing them for the public, unlike Apple.

I suggest what Sun would really like is to sell more Sparc Servers, and to do so, they might like to sell them with a Windows version for Sparc. Doubt that MS will ever support or release that version. So maybe, Sun is doing the next best thing;

Sun Microsystems Acquires Innotek (recent)

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Now the main product of Innotek is Virtualbox, a free open source program very much like Parallels for the Mac. I suggest that perhaps the reason that Sun wanted Innotek, was to start making a port for the Sun Sparc to enable it to run Windows in a VM (Virtualbox).

IBM, Allies Offer Microsoft-Free PCs

Buyers in Eastern Europe will soon see Linux-based PCs from IBM loaded with non-Microsoft apps.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143086-page,1/article.html

Quotes from the link;

" International Business Machines Corp said it was offering the PCs based on the open-source Linux operating system together with Red Hat software distributor VDEL of Austria and Polish distributor and services firm LX Polska in response to demand from Russian IT chiefs.

The PCs will include IBM's Lotus Symphony software based on the Open Document Format, a rival format to Microsoft's Office Open XML document format, which the latter is trying to get adopted as an ISO internationally approved standard.

IBM said the Linux PC line it would offer with VDEL and LX Polska, called Open Referent, would cut desktop computing costs for buyers by up to half.

It said chief information officers from Russian organizations including the Ministry of Defence, airline Aeroflot and private bank Alfa Bank had been among those who had requested an open-source PC."

Sun purchased Innotek, the business unit that spearheaded VirtualBox. Virtualbox has seamless which allows Windows programs to appear as programs on any Linux desktop (KDE, Gnome, IceWM, CDE, etc.) apart from the Windows OEM desktop.

I'll bet Microsoft is looking closely at that! With Virtualbox and a properly licensed WIndows install, one could possibly market a Linux PC as capable of running MS-Windows programs.

A little history of Innotek, it was involved in making a port of OpenOffice for OS/2. Most of the software that Innotek used to make was for OS/2.

I believe that current ports of OpenOffice to OS/2 or eComStation (the successor to OS/2) is made by eComStation now. Innotek as a company that made software for OS/2 would actually know quite a bit about Windows, as OS/2 and Windows NT at one point shared a fair amount of code, since M$ was involved with early OS/2 coding for IBM.

Innotek seems to have hit paydirt with Virtualbox, and being bought out by Sun. So not only can't we believe M$ when it says "OS/2 is dead," but OS/2 keeps coming back in some form to haunt M$.

I should have made that post a little clearer, when I said; "So not only can't we believe M$ when it says "OS/2 is dead," but OS/2 keeps coming back in some form to haunt M$."

The form that OS/2 is coming back as to haunt M$, is in the form of Virtualbox by Innotek. The knowledge of how OS/2 works, has been a benefit to Linux and now OpenSolaris (Sun).