Oracle buys Sun... [Archive]

hesjnet

April 20th, 2009, 01:30 PM

It failed.

A quick google search show that Oracle is linux-friendly

Oracle's Linux commitment began in 1998 with the first commercial database on Linux. Today, Oracle Database is #1 on Linux with more than 82% market share. Oracle Applications and Oracle Fusion Middleware continue to build significant momentum on Linux as well.
Customers: More than 2,500 leading organizations entrust their Linux support to Oracle
Partners: Leading ISVs and infrastructure partners support Oracle Unbreakable Linux
http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/index.html

Maybe this merger may finally bring a complete enterprise solution for linux?

Giant Speck

April 20th, 2009, 01:33 PM

I like the picture they have up on their website:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk122/SpecKtacle/Screenshot-13.png

SunnyRabbiera

April 20th, 2009, 01:34 PM

Yes, but there are some who will no doubt bring up the history oracle had with RedHat.
I know Oracle has a lot of open source projects and stuff but Oracle itself seems to be a lot less active in its projects.

DeadSuperHero

April 20th, 2009, 01:39 PM

Crap! I should've listened to my gut instinct and bought Sun stock when it was cheap....

Sigh.

Unterseeboot_234

April 20th, 2009, 01:42 PM

I would think Microsoft will make their Windows7 reject the Java plug-in, or completely hide it. Microsoft was totally focused on challenging Google's entry into web-based business software. MS Word will be free in 2010 with sidebar ads running in a browser, at least IE vers.xx. I've got a gut feeling that Java / JavaFX is now in the back seat unless it has to do with database solutions.

Maybe after all the dust settles we'll see a Microsoft yacht racing the Oracle yacht on CNN.

SunnyRabbiera

April 20th, 2009, 01:47 PM

Keyper7

April 20th, 2009, 01:54 PM

Yeh the database stuff seems to be Oracles big deal, so it doesnt look good for suns products...

Let's not be hasty. Ignoring the importance of Java, Solaris and OpenOffice (and even the rival MySQL) would be very stupid and Oracle knows that... I hope.

SunnyRabbiera

April 20th, 2009, 01:58 PM

Hope so too, if mysql goes down the whole thing can go down in smoke.
Mysql is far more popular then anything Oracle made so if that dies then things will sink quickly.
I am just wondering what this will do to Redhat...

hesjnet

April 20th, 2009, 01:59 PM

I would think Microsoft will make their Windows7 reject the Java plug-in, or completely hide it.

Microsoft hasn't rejected og completely hidden flash just because they have made silverlight. It would not be legal(in Europe at least).

dragos240

April 20th, 2009, 02:13 PM

I'm actually worried for sun. Good times...... I remember compiling countless java files for my rs client and server, so much fun. Brings back the good old days. I really hope oracle keeps sun's products in tact.

Skripka

April 20th, 2009, 02:22 PM

I like the picture they have up on their website:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk122/SpecKtacle/Screenshot-13.png

What is Tuz not good enough for the marketing department or something? Discrimination I say!!!!

Giant Speck

April 20th, 2009, 02:23 PM

What is Tuz not good enough for the marketing department or something? Discrimination I say!!!!

Nah, turns out while Tuz has been filling in for Tux, Tux has been at a day spa health resort in the Swiss Alps gettin' buff. This is actually a tabloid photograph of him.

gnomeuser

April 20th, 2009, 02:36 PM

http://www.sun.com/third-party/global/oracle/index.jsp

I am not sure how I feel about this one, I rather it been IBM as Oracle seems very anti linux.

Anti Linux you do realise that for years Oracle have not only had their own Linux distribution (based on RHEL) but they also contributed lots of code to Linux amongst others the upcoming btrfs filesystem was developed at Oracle on their dime (now expanded to encompass Red Hat, IBM and Novell' dimes as well just to mention a few as well as several volunteers).

Before that they had Linux marked in the highest support tier for their Oracle Database products.. higher even than Windows at some point.

Anti Linux my furry backside.

quinnten83

April 20th, 2009, 02:42 PM

Microsoft hasn't rejected og completely hidden flash just because they have made silverlight. It would not be legal(in Europe at least).

When has a trivial little thing like legality stopped microsoft (or any other big corporation for that matter)?
I'm affraid that MySql is lost to us now. Virtualbox down the drain and all the other open-source projects sun had running.
I think this is a horrible combination, Oracle-sun.

ade234uk

April 20th, 2009, 02:46 PM

If we want to raise awareness about Linux this has got to be good has it not?

We all complain businesses, do not take Linux seriously in business, so this has got to be good.

Skripka

April 20th, 2009, 03:00 PM

but they also contributed lots of code to Linux amongst others the upcoming btrfs filesystem was developed at Oracle on their dime

So, what you're saying is that Oracle is responsible for your system that was recently killed? ;)

Phreaker

April 20th, 2009, 03:02 PM

Is it possible for someone to buy Sun?

gnomeuser

April 20th, 2009, 03:09 PM

So, what you're saying is that Oracle is responsible for your system that was recently killed? ;)

No, I did that all on my own. It is part of what I do in Free Software. I break my system so you do not have to. It's called QA and it's what real men do.

I am thankful that Oracle gave us btrfs, there is wide agreement that it will be the next big thing in filesystems under Linux. They invested in taking Linux further which is a good thing.

gnomeuser

April 20th, 2009, 03:10 PM

Is it possible for someone to buy Sun?

Oracle just bought them.. I am guessing if you make them a superior offer. So start pooling up your allowance.

Simian Man

April 20th, 2009, 03:13 PM

Is it possible for someone to buy Sun?

Yeah, I can't believe Nasa would allow this!!!

Seriously I don't think this is such a big deal. Most of Sun's important products will live on because they are open source (for the most part anyway). In fact I'm glad Oracle bought them over IBM because Oracle will be more likely to continue the UltraSparc architecture because it doesn't compete with anything Oracle is doing.

Giant Speck

April 20th, 2009, 03:14 PM

Oracle just bought them.. I am guessing if you make them a superior offer. So start pooling up your allowance.

For some reason, I think there was confusion between this Sun:

http://tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:N3lBhCGruhrsTM:http://www.agentgroup.unimore.it/pppj08/images/sun_logo.png

and this Sun:

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:IXYQFh_APusRSM:http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/assets/channels/education/ae/sun_main.jpg

dbrooke

April 20th, 2009, 03:29 PM

I awoke, and the sky is falling.

Oracle buying Sun is scary to me. Oracle in charge of releasing good Java SDK's seems like it could introduce even more delays and problems. Oracle buying out it's major database competitor is a bit scary. Sun standing down as a pillar of technological innovations (against the Microsoft technology train) is a bit scary.

I'm not sure what to think about it either, but it's big news for sure!

LowSky

April 20th, 2009, 03:41 PM

Well if Oracle continues its practices, then a good amount of Sun's employees will be fired.
You got to love these company buyouts. I never understood the logic of buying a failing company in order to get its products that may or may not be worth the price. Its like buying week old bread and hoping it isn't moldy.

MaindotC

April 20th, 2009, 06:05 PM

Look for an update from Oracle stating that MySQL is considered legacy and no longer supported...

adamitj

April 20th, 2009, 07:10 PM

RiceMonster

April 20th, 2009, 07:16 PM

Well Java's not going anywhere because Oracle uses it for some of their software (like SQLDeveloper). I'm just wondering what happens to MySQL now.

Yeti can't ski

April 20th, 2009, 07:18 PM

Well, before judging exactly what will happen I would wait for some feedback from antitrust authorities in the US and in Europe. I am not a specialist in the field, but it seems that in some specific areas Oracle+Sun market shares could hit the 50% mark. In that case, it is unlikely that Oracle would be able to bring all Sun assets home.

In a dream scenario, Oracle would be forced by antitrust authorities to establish Mozilla-like non-profit foundations to whom transfer all of its rights connected to MySQL and OpenOffice, preserving and enhancing their open source development. Still, it is just wishful thinking. I don’t think any of that will happen.

Icehuck

April 20th, 2009, 07:26 PM

Look for an update from Oracle stating that MySQL is considered legacy and no longer supported...

Why would they put down MySQL? That is just another product that would bring them revenue. If they dropped MySQL right away they would lose all the customers they currently have.

jdrodrig

April 20th, 2009, 07:36 PM

Well, Oracle+MySQL providing the backend and Java the GUI frontend, seems a great match...

Manage your whole datacenter from your Java-enabled cell phone!

Methuselah

April 20th, 2009, 08:14 PM

Bah, I hate consolidation.
Ah well, let's see what comes from it.

Personally, I don't think they're going to stop supporting MySQL just yet.
Does Oracle believe that everyone currently using MySQL wants or coudl even afford Oracle?
MYSQL is a product on a different tier; a more entry level dataabse.

ghindo

April 20th, 2009, 08:26 PM

The companies behind ZFS and btrfs joining together? Interesting.

MaindotC

April 20th, 2009, 09:33 PM

Why would they put down MySQL? That is just another product that would bring them revenue. If they dropped MySQL right away they would lose all the customers they currently have.

MySQL is a competitor to Oracle. Stop supporting MySQL and you force users into another database. They could even screw MySQL users into an "introductory rate for existing MySQL users to migrate to Oracle".

Delever

April 20th, 2009, 09:55 PM

MySQL is a competitor to Oracle.

This is wrong, if they acquire it.

Stop supporting MySQL and you force users into another database. They could even screw MySQL users into an "introductory rate for existing MySQL users to migrate to Oracle".

Question would rather be: what do you do with two successful products you own? Put your name in front of them i guess... Because you may easily force significant portion of users to another databases, like MSSQL and PostgreSQL.

I fear more for VirtualBox, last proprietary release was quite good.

ghindo

April 20th, 2009, 10:24 PM

Ars Technica has a pretty extensive article on the buyout and what it means for the open-source community. Interesting read:

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/04/oracle-acquires-sun-ars-explores-the-impact-on-open-source.ars

RPG Master

April 20th, 2009, 10:45 PM

Oracle better not hurt the development of OpenOffice :(

Mateo

April 20th, 2009, 10:46 PM

Oracle database is easily the worst between MySQL, MSSQL, and Postgres. So what I am expecting from this deal is Oracle to bring the good developers over from MySQL and put them on the Oracle team. So I don't expect MySQL to die or anything, I'm just not expecting major features to be released on a reasonable schedule any more. In my mind Oracle is a bad company that makes bad products and survives through "it's too much trouble to switch" mentality. So I will be dropping MySQL from all of my websites and switching to Postgres. Which is arguably a better product any ways.

Mateo

April 20th, 2009, 10:49 PM

This news creeps me for sure, but I think we do not need to worry too much.

If Oracle put MySQL down, they haven't already bought PostgreSQL - and will will do it. If they start to put a different licensees on Java, we still have OpenJDK.

I think they will maintain the Sun's opensource projects and some of their philosophy, or they will lost all money invested to buy Sun as soon as developers worldwide start to use alternative options.

No, it matters a lot. We need big companies supporting these projects. If Java has to become a strictly voluntary project you can forget about it. Think OpenMoko vs. Google Android. Not even close. We need big companies. But we need ones that are good at their jobs.

MaindotC

April 20th, 2009, 11:27 PM

This is wrong, if they acquire it.

This is not wrong. As of right now, MySQL is a free, open-source competitor to Oracle. As Oracle continues its purchase of Sun, MySQL will eventually fall under Oracle's umbrella and will probably be discontinued (or no longer supported). When that happens, my statement will no longer apply so it's not wrong now and won't apply when Oracle acquires MySQL.

Yeti can't ski

April 20th, 2009, 11:38 PM

No, it matters a lot. We need big companies supporting these projects. If Java has to become a strictly voluntary project you can forget about it. Think OpenMoko vs. Google Android. Not even close. We need big companies. But we need ones that are good at their jobs.

Think about Window$ and M$ (big company) and Ubuntu and Canonical (small company)... ;)

BGFG

April 21st, 2009, 12:25 AM

The companies behind ZFS and btrfs joining together? Interesting.

Totally forgot that! we may see ZFS GPL'ed yet. Filesystems and databases are going to get interesting ;)

Edit: I seriously think OpenSoalris is going GPL soon. That system may come to the fore in leaps and bounds very shortly.

kevin11951

April 21st, 2009, 12:57 AM

LAOP is not as catchy as LAMP ;)

(neither is LAPP ;)(postgre)

ubuntu-geek

April 21st, 2009, 01:00 AM

Pretty interesting, using both Oracle and Sun products at work we are interested to see what happens..

Phreaker

April 21st, 2009, 05:02 AM

Still I'm worried, I hope that they would not ruin Sun's products

rucadulu

April 21st, 2009, 05:10 AM

http://www.sun.com/third-party/global/oracle/index.jsp

I am not sure how I feel about this one, I rather it been IBM as Oracle seems very anti linux.

What are you talking about? Oracle has their own Linux distro "Oracle Enterprise Linux" built form Red Hat Enterprise Linux source. We have 22 servers at work running it right now. And the Oracle support is far better in my opinion the the support we had from Red Hat.

Wiebelhaus

April 21st, 2009, 05:12 AM

Some of the folks saying Oracle is "anti-linux" may need to shape up on their Linux history.

Oracle is most certainly NOT "Anti-Linux".

Dragonbite

April 21st, 2009, 05:13 AM

These will be interesting times, that's for sure.

I'm sure Microsoft is none-too-pleased about this though. In one swoop Oracle can compete with Microsoft on the Operating System (Solaris vs Windows), the Database (Oracle vs SQL Server but that's nothing new) , Office Suite (OpenOffice or StarOffice vs Office) and language (Java vs .NET).

None of this is really new, but having it consolidated into one company makes it a little trickier.

Wiebelhaus

April 21st, 2009, 05:13 AM

Pretty interesting, using both Oracle and Sun products at work we are interested to see what happens..

Only good things mate.

I'm honestly siked about this.

Wiebelhaus

April 21st, 2009, 05:14 AM

Dragonbite

April 21st, 2009, 05:18 AM

I just don't know enough about Oracle to determine how I feel about it. Only thing I've heard repeatedly is about Larry's Ego!

toupeiro

April 21st, 2009, 06:53 AM

From an enterprise standpoint, I think this is awesome! Benchmarks show that sunfires, whether they be SPARC, Intel, or AMD simply outperform the competition with Linux and Solaris (obviously). I've put them head to head with Dell and HP and there has been no question of this. What this gives Enterprise users of oracle is a hardware architecture even more tightly coupled with oracle development. I'd venture to say that Sun was already the baseline for all I/O oracle benchmarks for a few years based on whitepapers I've read over time. All this does is weave a tighter basket for all those databases to sit in.

I really thought Cisco would have shown more interest, as they seem to express far more interest of entering the hardware business than Oracle. A huge deal of Suns revenues were from its hardware sales. If you look at the direction they are trying to take with Nexus, it would be brilliant of them to absorb sun, who already has a very strong bladesystem offering, which is extremely power efficient.

On the other hand, I am concerned on where this puts Solaris. Oracle has already made a commitment to "unbreakable linux", whereas I'd still venture to say the industry still has a larger commitment to Solaris for running oracle. Is Oracle's investment into sun going to Hurt solaris or help it? It could definitely go either way. I for one hope to see Solaris around for a long time after this merger. This may also be just the type of thing needed to natively port ZFS to linux. Many, many cool things could come from this acquisition.

jespdj

April 21st, 2009, 10:26 AM

Oracle Press Release: Oracle Buys Sun (http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/018363)

Ars Technica: Oracle buys Sun: understanding the impact on open source (http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/04/oracle-acquires-sun-ars-explores-the-impact-on-open-source.ars)

Yeti can't ski

April 21st, 2009, 12:00 PM

From Groklaw:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090420083210981

samjh

April 21st, 2009, 12:39 PM

I've written a large essay on this on my blog (http://www.xessnet.com/2009/04/21/oracle-buys-sun-microsystems/) and won't repeat it here (it's too long anyway).

To sum up, I think Java itself will be geared more toward integration with Oracle's enterprise stack. Oracle has been interested in databases and applications for mobile devices as well, so they'll want to expand Java's mobile devices capabilities too. Oracle will ditch its own VM, and work to integrate VirtualBox. Glassfish will be left open to the FOSS community to tinker with, and interesting features grafted into WebLogic Server.

I don't think Oracle will screw up Java. Too much of their business depends on Java being strong and competitive against Microsoft's .NET and its associated stack (Windows Server, MS SQL Server, MS Office, etc.).

Initially, I preferred IBM to be the potential buyer, but perhaps Oracle won't be too bad. But I have a strong feeling that Sun's hardware business might be shut down or sold off. Has Oracle shown any interest in getting into the server hardware market?

Dragonbite

April 21st, 2009, 02:03 PM

Where does Oracle owning Java put Red Hat and its JBoss product? Wonder if this is taking a direct aim at Red Hat or not. Maybe Red Hat needs a database layer?

Tibuda

April 21st, 2009, 02:32 PM

I've written a large essay on this on my blog and won't repeat it here (it's too long anyway).
You forgot the link to your blog.

samjh

April 21st, 2009, 03:08 PM

You forgot the link to your blog.

I had removed it because it might have been considered unsolicited advertising. I've clarified the policy with the mods/admins, so will repost the link.

Where does Oracle owning Java put Red Hat and its JBoss product? Wonder if this is taking a direct aim at Red Hat or not. Maybe Red Hat needs a database layer?

I think it's a red herring. Red Hat is first and foremost an operating system company. JBoss is a strong product, but not its core business. I don't think they'll feel too threatened by Oracle, nor will Oracle be competing directly against Red Hat.

A potentially wise business move might be a cooperative venture between Red Hat and Oracle, with a tightly integrated RHEL-Oracle-WebLogic-Java stack to assault Microsoft's Windows-SQL_Server-IIS-.NET stack.

Sporkman

April 21st, 2009, 03:42 PM

For some reason, I think there was confusion between this Sun:

http://tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:N3lBhCGruhrsTM:http://www.agentgroup.unimore.it/pppj08/images/sun_logo.png

and this Sun:

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:IXYQFh_APusRSM:http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/assets/channels/education/ae/sun_main.jpg

SUN = Stanford University Network

ukripper

April 21st, 2009, 04:03 PM

I shall say bye to MySQL:( and

a better Hello World in JAVA!!:)

jdrodrig

April 21st, 2009, 09:06 PM

I think Oracle bought Sun now, just to Eclipse Ubuntu 9.04' release!

spontaneity

April 21st, 2009, 10:05 PM

I am literally crying.
I think this day is very well suited to this news - many very sad things have happened on this day in history.
Like many, I am deeply worried about the future of OpenOffice, MySQL, Java, and Solaris. I understand that although they could be great products for Oracle to use and enhance, after reading the following quote from Larry Ellison: "Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system - applications to disk - where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up," I am afraid that they will become too deeply integrated into Oracle's proprietary products for their open source value to continue.
I fear the sun has passed the zenith of the open source era.

PS: Does writing an entire post in I-statements sound redundant?

Beezleray

April 22nd, 2009, 02:29 AM

To put a light spin on the issue, this buyout seems like the new boss in the US version of The Office, where sun is Michael Scott and Oracle is the new boss, Charles.

JordyD

April 22nd, 2009, 02:46 AM

[snip]
Its like buying week old bread and hoping it isn't moldy.

I disagree. Moldy bread has no chance of becoming unmoldy(I hope that's a word), but there is a chance that Oracle can revive Sun's dying projects. I'd say it's more like pitching in money for a dying man's medicine in exchange for his soul.

On topic, I don't know what to think, as I don't know much about Oracle other than they make a really expensive database.

Yeti can't ski

April 22nd, 2009, 08:57 AM

I am afraid that they will become too deeply integrated into Oracle's proprietary products for their open source value to continue.
I fear the sun has passed the zenith of the open source era.

PS: Does writing an entire post in I-statements sound redundant?

Well, I share most of your concerns. On the other hand, this new scenario may at least eliminate some areas of ambiguity and compel some nice projects to fork and become truly FOSS. Sun is (was) a great company, with nice principles and ideas, but often it applied the concept of sharing and opening projects only halfheartedly, keeping too much control and, thus, damaging community-oriented development.

This seems particularly true in relation to Open Office, just as an example.

I don’t think that the Bulldozer Oracle will bother that much to preserve uncomfortable balances. If it doesn’t, projects will have to find new roads and this may be actually an opportunity. Bring new oxygen in!

I truly don't think we will see the dawn of FOSS; certainly not in my desktop! :)

Dragonbite

April 22nd, 2009, 01:42 PM

Time to go back to Windows!

nah... just joking :lolflag:

This may be good, this may not be good, only time will tell.

If Oracle tries to close doors with open source applications then the vacuum will be filled by something else

Solaris by Linux/BSD
Java by Mono/Python/etc
MySQL by PostgreSQL/Firebird
Netbeans by Eclipse (maybe help push Eclipse to higher levels?)
OpenOffice by Go-OO (fully forked)/KOffice/Google Apps/Symphony

And that doesn't include the number of people who would try re-creating the application's functionality which may make it even better! Learned from the mistakes of the fallen.

From the ashes of Chaos a new day will dawn. Woo Hoo!

Sporkman

April 22nd, 2009, 07:02 PM

I think Oracle bought Sun now, just to Eclipse Ubuntu 9.04' release!

...I think you're right! :mad:

gnomeuser

April 22nd, 2009, 08:00 PM

...I think you're right! :mad:

Spending several billions of dollars doing it.. now that is balls of pure shiny brass right there.

Oracle will be changing their slogan to "we have money like dirt.. eat it suckers"

spontaneity

April 22nd, 2009, 08:20 PM

Well, I share most of your concerns. On the other hand, this new scenario may at least eliminate some areas of ambiguity and compel some nice projects to fork and become truly FOSS. Sun is (was) a great company, with nice principles and ideas, but often it applied the concept of sharing and opening projects only halfheartedly, keeping too much control and, thus, damaging community-oriented development.

This seems particularly true in relation to Open Office, just as an example.

I don’t think that the Bulldozer Oracle will bother that much to preserve uncomfortable balances. If it doesn’t, projects will have to find new roads and this may be actually an opportunity. Bring new oxygen in!

I truly don't think we will see the dawn of FOSS; certainly not in my desktop! :)

Dawn? Or do you mean dusk?

Yeti can't ski

April 22nd, 2009, 10:55 PM

You are absolutely right. I inverted the words! Shame on me. I meant dusk.

Twitch6000

April 22nd, 2009, 11:13 PM

I wonder what this means for OpenSolaris and OpenOffice?

If anything I hope redhat takes control of OpenOffice =[.

Dragonbite

April 23rd, 2009, 01:52 AM

I wonder what this means for OpenSolaris and OpenOffice?

If anything I hope redhat takes control of OpenOffice =[.

While Red Hat may, I doubt it. Chances are if OpenOffice.org officially is closed off then Novell's Go-OO will probably become the default unless IBM pushes its Symphony in that direction.

Of course this may be a boon to KOffice. ;)

It would be interesting to see what Red Hat would come up with but their focus is so not into the desktop that I think they would sooner provide a cloud-based office suite (which they could sell to companies for hosting a "private cloud")

Mateo

April 23rd, 2009, 03:43 AM

Still haven't heard them mention MySQL at all. I wonder if they'll kill it or try to sell it off. They obviously have no interest in it, but I don't see why they would be opposed to selling it; it's not really competitive in their markets anyways.

toupeiro

April 23rd, 2009, 08:51 AM

I have a strong feeling that Sun's hardware business might be shut down or sold off. Has Oracle shown any interest in getting into the server hardware market?

I could be wrong, but I seriously do not see this happening. More oracle runs on Sun hardware, SPARC or x86_64, than any other vendor. If you've ever been at ground zero for configuring a brand spanking new oracle environment and you're reading whitepapers, Oracle themselves always test lab sunfires. There was a reason for this then, and even more of a reason now. I've always been more of a Compaq/HP proliant fan when it came to Intel and AMD servers, but that was until I really started working with the X series sunfire boxes. I recently put into production a 1RU Sunfire, dual quad core AMD CPU's, 32GB ram server with 1TB of 10K SAS storage and 4 integrated 1GB NIC's for around $6,000. An HP DL360 G6 configured similarly cost over $11,000. HP really had nothing to compete with this, from a cost, density, or in class performance standpoint. Killing off Sunfires would be a huge shot in the foot IMO.

samjh

April 23rd, 2009, 10:30 AM

I doubt OpenOffice will be closed off. If Oracle doesn't want to devote a team on it, they are free to leave it to the FOSS community. But I feel that they will be involved in OpenOffice's development. Oracle made a foray into office applications years ago, but it flopped. Now, they have another chance with a well-established code-base in OpenOffice.

I wouldn't worry about MySQL either. MySQL is geared toward FOSS users or small businesses; many of its users won't or can't fork out the cash for Oracle RDBMS. If Oracle is smart, they use MySQL to capture the small and medium-sized business market, hobbyists, and the academic sector. Their traditional Oracle RDBMS can concentrate on maintaining dominance in the large corporate enterprise and data warehousing market.

I could be wrong, but I seriously do not see this happening. More oracle runs on Sun hardware, SPARC or x86_64, than any other vendor. If you've ever been at ground zero for configuring a brand spanking new oracle environment and you're reading whitepapers, Oracle themselves always test lab sunfires. There was a reason for this then, and even more of a reason now. I've always been more of a Compaq/HP proliant fan when it came to Intel and AMD servers, but that was until I really started working with the X series sunfire boxes. I recently put into production a 1RU Sunfire, dual quad core AMD CPU's, 32GB ram server with 1TB of 10K SAS storage and 4 integrated 1GB NIC's for around $6,000. An HP DL360 G6 configured similarly cost over $11,000. HP really had nothing to compete with this, from a cost, density, or in class performance standpoint. Killing off Sunfires would be a huge shot in the foot IMO.
Thanks for the info. That's very interesting, and makes Oracle's acquisition appear even smarter than at first glance. :)

jespdj

April 23rd, 2009, 12:23 PM

Another article which gives an overview of the similarities and differences between Oracle and Sun, with links to other articles about many of the points:

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/04/22/Oracle-Sun

Yeti can't ski

April 23rd, 2009, 12:40 PM

A note of comment from the head of OpenOffice Project, which is interesting for its obvious "uninformativeness".

http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10012613o-2000331761b,00.htm

paulmgreins

April 23rd, 2009, 03:20 PM

I my worried about mysql

Dragonbite

April 23rd, 2009, 03:40 PM

IBM is getting cozier with Postgre.

Unterseeboot_234

April 23rd, 2009, 08:33 PM

Whoah, jespdj! I clicked your link and it says:

I have been notified by Sun’s legal staff that this posting may not be appropriate at this time, and asked to take it down.

Could you recall any of the relevant points made in the blog?

Yeti can't ski

April 23rd, 2009, 10:08 PM

Could you recall any of the relevant points made in the blog?

Sorry to step in, but I was able read the blog before it was cut down. It didn't have anything in particular. Just a big tables with comparisons of the products of each company and links to several articles.

I quite don't understand it. If the blog's owner is an employee or shareholder of either Sun or Oracle with access to privileged information then OK. It could make sense. Otherwise it makes no sense at all...

EDIT - He is an employee of Sun.