The Wall st Journal reports two board factions at odds in Sun Microsystems, one in favor of the IBM deal led by Jonathan Schwartz, the other opposing, led by Scooter McNealy.

Pundits are already spinning this FAIL WHALE as a repeat of the Microsoft Yahoo! debacle starring another egotistical company founder, Jerry Yang.

Butting heads with Scott McNealy at Sun Microsystems is ill advised. Even if you are the CEO. With Schwartz touting an exit with IBM as being the company’s best option–after riding the share price down from 20 to a low of about 3… before rumors of the IBM takeover sent the stock soaring.

At a stock price of 3, Sun Microsystems was essentially being valued at about the same as their cash stockpile of 2.64 Billion, essentially declaring the company to be of no value.

Sun’s one billion dollar acquisition of MySQL is in shambles, with the source code forking and Sun having lost control of the key Intellectual Property as well as key technical founders.

This all makes Steve Gillmor’s Open Source Ponytail Video even more prescient.

Mark my words, Schwartz is toast, IBM deal or no deal. If the IBM deal fails completely (most likely outcome), look for Scott McNealy to pull a Michael Dell (or a Jerry Yang, depending on how you look at it) and to appoint himself CEO again. The board of Sun wouldn’t allow such a thing if there were even one viable suitor left. But there isn’t.

My 2 cents,
Miko