Back in August, the President of Sun Microsystems posted a little dig at HP on his blog, saying:
To me, HP's problems spawn from the death of… their operating system, HP/UX. Like IBM, they've elected to ask their customers and ISV's to move to Red Hat Linux or Microsoft Windows on x86 systems. And if you're an ISV, how does that differentiate HP? – they're a box vendor. If you're a customer, where does that leave you with your HP/UX investments? Facing untimely change – with a vendor no longer in charge of their OS.
Pretty innocuous, right?
Well, HP didn't think so. They had their jackass lawyers send a nastygram to Sun, demanding that they take down the blog entry. Riiiiight.
Give it to Sun — they didn't waver. Instead, they sent their own nastygram right back, and promptly delivered both letters to the ChillingEffects clearing-house for public humilation.
Once again, in certain of the places this is a statement of opinion by Jonathan Schwartz. His opinion is based on his good faith assessment of the current climate of HP. Alternatively, however, Sun will also stand behind this as a statement of fact that is true and accurate based on the above substantiation. As detailed by the above facts, we have seen signs that HP is abandoning HP/UX.
Jonathan Schwartz's opinions and even his vigorous debate on this subject as well as Sun's product comparisons and dialog on these commercial matters are inherent in Sun's competition with HP and are part of the free market system in which our companies operate. For our statements of fact, Sun has valid, objective and verifiable evidence. Accordingly, and based on the above, Sun affirmatively stands by its claims regarding HP/UX and will not agree to cease making such truthful and/or subjective claims.
(Thanks, Jason!)
