They’ll still have the fastest Java VM for Nehalem.

The rumors about IBM acquiring Sun Microsystems have been running rampant the past several days. I remember when we used to talk about that all the time.

When I was working at OTI, I was on the edges of the relationship between IBM and Sun which had been forged over Java.

A lot of the tensions were due to different goals. In the part of IBM/OTI where I worked, there was great interest in using Java for embedded applications. The IBM J9 VM came out of OTI’s legacy in building embeddable Smalltalk VMs. J9 provided a modular implementation, so the footprint could be controlled by choosing options and selecting one of a number of different core class libraries of different sizes. This was great for the embedded developer giving lots of control, but flew in the face of Sun’s “Write once, run anywhere” Java slogan. This led to a lot of friction with Sun trying to control things via the JCP. As I understand it, IBM and Sun had negotiated a special relationship over Java which gave IBM some freedom of action outside of normal Sun terms, but IBM always played by the Sun rules as much as possible.

At times, we, as developers rather than business strategists, used to wonder why IBM didn’t just buy Sun, particularly when at it is now, their stock valuation would make it a bargan.

Maybe the time has come. Maybe not.