'Linux is Unix,' says Sun. 'No it isn't,' says IBM...

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.

"Sun is a formidable company and we would welcome them as a competitor. But we'll spend little time worrying about Sun as long as they continue to misunderstand what Linux is about," he added.

Dr Malcolm Beattie, a specialist in Unix programming with Oxford University computer services, echoed Frye's words.

He said: "They're still at the dithering stage - whether to embrace Linux or to stick with what they know. The hardware side supports Linux on Sparc but the software side wants to concentrate on Solaris. They've got a lot of big customers and they're afraid they won't be perceived to be a single solution company," he said.

Furthermore, McNealy's words contradict those of his own COO, Ed Zander, who denied Sun had big plans to move into the Linux market.

In an exclusive interview with silicon.com, Zander said: "We feel it's important for application development and for our content to have one focus, and that's Solaris."

The apparent contradiction is further confounded by Sun's recent $2bn acquisition of Linux specialist Cobalt. US industry observers have speculated that Sun plans to replace the AMD microprocessors and Linux operating system that run Cobalt's black boxes with its own UltraSparc and Solaris products.

Sidestepping the issue, McNealy argued that people just want devices that work. The brand of microprocessor and operating system that make them work are a non-issue, he claimed.