IBM Has Nothing To Fear From Sun vis a vis Novell/SuSe Linux

There have been numerous follow-up on yesterday's news about Jonathan Schwartz's hints that Sun could be interested in acquiring Novell. In eWeek, the lead sentence implies 'enormous implications for IBM'.

Poppycock!

We're talking about Linux, people! Open Source. Your choice of distros. If IBM doesn't want to play with Red Hat, and Sun succeeds in making SuSe not want to play with IBM... industry analyst Garfield The Cat says "big fat hair deal! Yawn!

IBM would barely lose a step switching over to another distro, if they so chose. They would barely lose a step even if they chose to create their own distro. IBM could mobilize the resources, put together a support plan and do the engineering to build the distro and bring it to market faster than Sun could integrate Novell and SuSe into their own organization. I think I know which side I'd put my money on! But that's only if IBM thinks it's worth fighting at that level, and frankly I doubt they would. IBM is already selling against low cost and/or free web application servers. Red Hat's won't make much a differnce, nor would a SuSe/Novell/Sun offering.

Another aspect of this, by the way, is the newly minted Microsoft - Sun Bududy - Buddy relationship. Who do you think drives sales of more Microsoft product? IBM or Sun? I wonder if Microsoft would really want their new Sun buddy to push IBM into creating their own Linux distro, putting the only brand in the inudstry with prestige equal to or greater than Microsoft's directly onto Microsoft's most feared competition? . Who do you think Microsoft would most worry about as having the wherewithal to make a legitimate desktop play with a Linux distro? IBM. No question.

This would be a war that nobody wants. Surely not Sun, because they won't fare well in the end.