McNealy To Hurd: Lets Merge OSes

Ahh.. The specter of a Unified Unix raises its head again.

In a bizarre move, Sun CEO Scott McNealy posted this open letter to HP chief Mark Hurd.

He's pitching a converging of HP-UX with "Sun's flagship volume UNIX, Solaris 10."

Reality check: It's March 1st, not April 1st right?

The timing is not fortuitous. Tomorrow, HP, Intel and Oracle (kinda) will hold a web-cast confab on "The Future Of Enterprise Computing." Heavy.

It will feature Hurd and Intel chief Paul Otellini as well as "a message delivered by Larry Ellison, Oracle Chairman and CEO." Perhaps from a large boat.

Note to the planners: Ellison hasn't been chairman of Oracle for some time. But I digress:

McNealy's note, the link to which was helpfully sent out to reporters Wednesday, is clearly meant to inject Sun into a decidedly non-Sun event.

Said one hardware reporter: "Sun tends to do this every time HP has an announcement. HP just sends nasty notes to the press with counter arguments when Sun makes an announcement. They are like 14 year olds."

In a preemptive strike on Tuesday, one Sun exec called the impending HP/Intel extravaganza as "trying to put lipstick on a pig."

You gotta love this stuff.