IBM-Sun Merger Slowed Up for Due Diligence

Published: Mar 20, 2009
Updated: Feb 2, 2021
1 minute read
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The Wall Street Journal reported late March 20 that the IBM-Sun Microsystems merger has been held up for a few extra days due to additional due diligence in looking at Sun’s many complicated licensing agreements involving Linux, Solaris, Open Solaris and other technologies.

Sun, in fact, may have some of the most complicated licensing paperwork in the IT world, thanks to its many partnerships with both proprietary and open-source vendors.

While eWEEK’s information on March 19 was that the deal could be done as early as March 23, it now looks like the deal may go deeper into next week as a result of the additional legal work.

We’ll keep tabs on this story for as long as it takes.

Oh, and once again we remind you: Lawyers are paid by the hour.

Chris Preimesberger

Chris J. Preimesberger is Editor Emeritus of eWEEK. In his 16 years and more than 5,000 articles at eWEEK, he distinguished himself in reporting and analysis of the business use of new-gen IT in a variety of sectors, including cloud computing, data center systems, storage, edge systems, security and others. In February 2017 and September 2018, Chris was named among the 250 most influential business journalists in the world (https://richtopia.com/inspirational-people/top-250-business-journalists/) by Richtopia, a UK research firm that used analytics to compile the ranking. He has won several national and regional awards for his work, including a 2011 Folio Award for a profile (https://www.eweek.com/cloud/marc-benioff-trend-seer-and-business-socialist/) of Salesforce founder/CEO Marc Benioff--the only time he has entered the competition. Previously, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. He has been a stringer for the Associated Press since 1983 and resides in Silicon Valley.

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