Enemy of my enemy 3

IBM and Sun haven’t gotten along much in the past decade. After all, Sun’s cofounder (and longtime CEO) Scott McNeily fancied himself the leader of the anti-Microsoft coalition, whereas IBM created Eclipse (get it) to wrest control of Java development away from Sun. (A mission that largely succeeded).

But then Sun has a new CEO, and as Jonathan Schwartz himself crowed last month, on Aug. 16 IBM committed to selling Sun’s Solaris OS to run on IBM hardware. (IBM also announced a less ambitious SOlaris reselling plan two years ago).

Now IBM is supporting another Sun anti-Microsoft effort. After backing the “Open Document Format” of Sun’s OpenOffice (and StarOffice), today IBM joined OpenOffice.org and committed programmers to develop OpenOffice.

Sun, Google, now IBM. Why do I feel that if Microsoft were gone, these three would be at each others’ throats? It reminds me of my high school days, when I got a chance to experience the backstabbing possibilities of European power politics prior to the Great War.

Technorati Tags: Google, IBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems