| Sumario: | In April 2004, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft have agreed to make peace and end the war of infantile barbs and legal wrangles in which they have been engaged. Microsoft has agreed to pay Sun nearly $2 billion in order to settle Sun's pending antitrust lawsuit against it, to resolve patent issues, and to pay in advance for a number of licensing royalties; and, in the longer term, the two firms have agreed to make their technologies compatible. The two have buried the hatchet as a result of Microsoft's desire to clean up its legal messes, and because of the competition that both companies face from Linux, a computer operating system that, unlike Sun or Microsoft, is written by volunteers and shared freely to those who want to download and use it. Sun is the main loser in the battle with Linux, because its Solaris operating system is most like Linux and so it is easy for users to change from Solaris to Linux. Sun's chief executive, Scott McNealey, needs to transform the company radically, but the issue is what sort of a company he wants it to be.
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