$111.7M is way too small of a difference to kill this deal. Clearly, the issue is in the other terms. It seems likely that Sun wanted IBM to make a firm commitm

$111.7M is way too small of a difference to kill this deal. Clearly, the issue is in the other terms. It seems likely that Sun wanted IBM to make a firm commitment right now and IBM wanted to reserve the right to back out for a while. Or, Sun has some kind of poison pill (besides its employees' hatred of IBM) that they weren't willing to drop. Or, maybe IBM wanted to be shielded from some liablities like support contracts for products they'd want to drop immediately. There's all kinds of reasons for which the deal could have fallen through, but $111.7M in price is not one.