oracle

Like a lot of people, I too wonder what will happen to the MySQL, Java, and hardware once Sun is integrated into Oracle.  I have opinions but those opinions alone aren't worth a hill of NetBeans.  Luckily, people like Gavin Clarke know what they're talking about.  Clarke has written an excellent article at The Register titled,  Sun and Oracle: end of a beautiful dream.

Oracle will take the decisions Sun could not, and that's what'll have people at Sun worried. And while change should be welcomed, there's no way this should be seen as a bright new dawn for Sun customers or those who've come to believe in its actions on open source or Java.

The first thing you can expect from a Oracle acquisition is due-diligence of the assets and a comparative analysis where Oracle has competing assets. Oracle will weigh up what's worth keeping and jettison the rest. The latter will be marked by end-of-lifing via support and maintenance, or releasing code to the community - where it will fade and die.

The article isn't as gloomy as the title or the above excerpt would imply. However, the article is pragmatic and leaves little room for dreamers.  Be sure to read the article!

"PostgreSQL developers expect that the new version will drive such migrations /from Oracle, IBM DB2, or Microsoft SQL/ because of the improved performance, features and administration capabilities. They anticipate an overall performance gain of between 10 percent and 20 percent for most applications.

PostgreSQL 8.2 is also taking aim at the open source MySQL database."

Complete Story

"Or, perhaps, I should say that Oracle is firing a shot at the heart of Red Hat, and commercial Linux?

This really, really ticks me off.

Oracle's claims as to why it felt it had to make this move are BS."

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, "Oracle's Red Hat rip-off", Linux-Watch, October 25, 2006