So what if they're not rolling in dough? I don't know a lot about Sun, but if they make good products and everybody at the company is happy, then bully for them if they decide to give stuff away for free.

The secret to being miserable to make money or goods the final goal. It's unfortunate that you didn't make the money you expected, but that doesn't make Sun a crap company.

I hope they can keep the SPARC alive...
(although the Power/PowerCell are good) :)

Wow, I REALLY LIKE what SunStock posted! Very hip and tasty. Now, if only Apple would bite the big one also... Then we could really celebrate the end of Global Nerdism!

My brother is a long-time Sun worshiper... Hey, Pete, you just gonna LOVE working with Big Blue!

If IBM buys Sun, it will be a stunning defeat for Global Nerdism.

Under the guidance of Chief Nerd Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's been just a collection of nerds working on bright shinies with scant sales potential.

Even worse, they've been beavering away doing their best to give most of Sun's assets away for free.

Finally, the idiot head of Sun, smoothest talking nerd of them all, will have to produce something besides silky buzzwords, should he be daft enough to stay on board.

Actually, both sides know he'd never make it in a real corporation, so a fat parachute will be rigged.
Whilst crying all the way to the bank, one last slick geekspeak bog will be left behind, about..... bollocks, who cares, it'll be attractive, tasty, megabuzzy and ultrashiney.
And predictably, you'll starve to death eating it.

-An idiot Sun Stockholder-

Having supported AIX for over five years and dealt with companies before and after IBM acquisition I would see a many switching to an OpenSolaris distribution and paying them for support.
While IBM has excellent support staff, the obstacles you have to get over to get to talk to them make it a painful experience.
Sun have a bit of a problem, they don't make SPARC Workstations any more for SPARC development but expect to continue to sell SPARC servers. If they need to continue making SPARC servers. It would make sense for Sun to sell a SPARC PCI-e card which can be installed into a PC and ship the necessary drivers with OpenSolaris as standard.
The other alternative would be to get the SPARC to use the same CPU slot as the AMD Opteron.

IBM has for a long time been a major reseller of Sun gear.

Sun hardware is increasingly undifferentiated.

Acquisition will allow IBM to make major, major cuts in administration, field, and stupid Sun pet projects, while increasing investment in software.

Warning do not buy Fujitsu SPARC systems a.k.a. Sun M-class.