Sun Eats Crow, Feathers Pass Without Incident

Today, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems announced a 10 year, 1.9 Billion (that's with a "B") deal that would put all litigation behind them. This comes on the heels of an announcement that Sun will lay off 3,300 employees, and that Sun's losses in the previous quarter were deeper than expected, around $800 Million.

So who is the big winner today? Arguably, Microsoft. Sun will allow them to continue supporting the Java VM. .NET Will be able to interoperate with Java better. And Microsoft gets to look like a humanitarian to a company whose big-mouthed leader is rapidly driving them to irrelevancy. Sure, Sun benefits more from the deal, IMO, because Microsoft (Again, IMO) is a better, smarter company. But all the interoperability stuff will do is ease the migration path from Sun to Microsoft for customers. The Microsoft VM (.NET) is arguably better than Java, and Microsoft's version of the Java Desktop (Longhorn) will be better as well.

But that's just what I think.