“IBM has accused Sun of confusing customers with its Linux
strategy and lacking sufficient understanding of the open source
OS. The conflict stems from last week’s Gartner Group symposium in
Florida where Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun, irritated open source
die-hards by claiming Unix was the same as Linux.”
“Despite what they say, Linux is Unix, and Sun is the biggest
and best Unix company. We’ll be number one in Linux by a long shot.
I’ll challenge our Linux experience against Redhat any day,”
McNealy told the audience.”
“McNealy’s comments were subsequently ridiculed by Dan Frye,
director of IBM’s Linux Technology Center in New York, who claimed
Sun misunderstands Linux completely. He said: “It’s a bold
assertion that Unix is Linux. It shows they haven’t really figured
out what Linux is and what it can do.”