SUN were basically forced to sell or face bankruptcy in a year or so. Their market was already gone by then. They were completely uncompetitive against Redhat and commodity x86, and they knew it - hence the big opensource push, which was too little too late, and the overall feel of confusion they were projecting. There was just no reason left to buy SUN for anyone but the most hardcore Solaris geek.

In hindsight, they should have tried to pivot to services, instead of focusing on releasing free software in the hope it would drive hardware sales.