IBM takes potshots at OpenSolaris

In a trend that seems to be increasing, IBM recently took the time to deride Sun on OpenSolaris. While I'd agree that Sun has been a bit skiddish at times and has certainly waffled more than any of us would have liked, saying that “OpenSolaris isn't a true open-source project is a bit disingenuous. It falls under an OSI approved license and it 100% forkable. It really is Open Source. Whether Sun is doing all it can to foster an active community is a whole other issue, but the wording in the article really seems like headline grabbing, which is IMHO not how companies should act. A couple quotes from the article:
“Sun holds it all behind the firewall. The community sees nothing,” Dan Frye, the IBM vice president who runs the company's Linux Technology Center, said Tuesday in an interview at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. “It's a facade. There's lots of marketing, but no community to speak of.”
IBM was concerned that OpenSolaris could become a “competitive threat,” and Frye assigned a programmer to monitor OpenSolaris goings-on. The company concluded there is no threat.
I guess if it's no threat, why are you taking the time to talk about it. The reality is that IBM and Sun have both done a ton to help Open Source. They have both contributed massive amounts of code, countless man hours and much more. This seems like a cheap shot with not a lot of upside. Come on guys, you're better than this. One can only hope that sensationalist journalism spun this into more than it was meant to be. These days, the odds on that are unfortunately quite high.
–jeremy
IBM, Sun, OpenSolaris, Open Source, Linux