A senior official has denied rumors floated yesterday by PC Pro and others that MontaVista will be acquired by Sun Microsystems. No such deal will happen any time soon, according to Kelly Herrell, VP of strategic operations with MontaVista and one of several former Sun employees recently hired by MontaVista.

“If there's a financial interest in MontaVista on Sun's part, I'm not aware of it,” Herrell said glibly.

Herrell prefaced the remark with the hedge that MontaVista “collaborates with a lot of large players,” but confidentiality comes into play. “It's their news to discuss,” Herrell stated.

Sun announced earlier this month that it would support Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) on a newly introduced line of low-cost Netra servers compliant with the ATCA standard for commodity telecom blade servers. The announcement was a major shift for Sun, not only because of its traditional reliance on proprietary hardware, but because CGL has gained traction among telecommunications equipment manufacturers largely at the expense of Sun's Solaris OS.

Sun has not yet specified whose brand of CGL it will support on its forthcoming line of ATCA servers. It may be negotiating a deal with MontaVista, or with another CGL distributor such as TimeSys or LynuxWorks, SuSE, or even Red Hat (and/or Wind River). Or, like competitor HP, it could roll its own Debian-based version of CGL.

However, Herrell noted that number two Sun executive Jonathan Schwartz has remarked several times in his blog that Sun may be interested in acquiring a Linux company. “And the bottom line is that MontaVista is the only financially viable pure-play Linux company that's still private,” Herrell stated.

Yet another possibility is that Sun will dabble in CGL, but also combat the emergence of CGL in the telecom market by opening the source to Solaris. Schwartz reportedly told CNet Asia in June that open-sourcing Solaris isn't a question of if, but when. “I don't want to say when that will happen. But make no mistake: We will open-source Solaris,” Schwartz reportedly said, according to CNet Asia.

Schwartz has earned a reputation for wild statements, however, writing in his blog during LinuxWorld that Sun might simply acquire Novell, a suggestion that turned out not to be feasible given the relative values of the two companies.

Of Sun's position, Herrell said candidly, “Sun's a major company with some major problems to resolve.” He then reiterated, “If Sun's going to announce the purchase of MontaVista tomorrow, MontaVista's executive team is unaware of it.”

Herrell formerly served as VP of Marketing for Linux server appliance company Cobalt Networks, which was acquired by Sun in September of 2000. He came to MontaVista in May of this year, two months before MontaVista hired another former Cobalt/Sun employee, Peder Ulander.

 
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