Oracle buys Sun for $7.4 Billion
LOOKS LIKE IBM just lost out; Oracle is buying Sun for $7.4 billion. Before you scratch your head and wonder, it actually makes a lot of sense.
Oracle more than anyone has pinned its app strategy on Java and now the firm doesn't have to go through a middleman to gets its way with the language. There is no wondering what the next rev will bring and no debate, from the Oracle point of view, "It is ours now, step off b*tch". The buy basically guarantees Oracle's code has a custom fitted home.
One big question is what happens to the hardware division of Sun? Does Oracle actually give a rat's hindquarters about SPARC? Given that Marc Tremblay just went to MS last week, we would guess that the chip architects at Sun are furiously polishing up their resumes now. Then again, given the cost of an Oracle license, they could just throw in a free Niagara box with every license.
Non-Java software has a bunch of interesting possibilities too, not the least of which is Open Office. That programme, great though it is, has somewhat languished under Sun. If Sun sales knock on your door and tell you to convert and buy support, you might not be convinced. Oracle, when doing the same, will have borderline violent sales staff making the same promise, but it will be reassuringly expensive as well.
Enterprises love this, especially if they can negotiate away a $10/seat license on OOo when buying several hundred dollars a seat worth of other Oracle wares. They also love an office suite that costs a tenth of MS Office and plays well with their enterprise software. I expect OOo 4.0 to tie in to the Oracle stack quite nicely.
The rest of the software will be incorporated where it makes sense; dropped in places, but more likely than not, simply gifted on an open source consortium.
MySQL will turn into Oracle Starter: Training Wheels Edition, and the middleware will look more and more like the paid for Oracle version with every rev. This isn't necessarily a bad thing and it could make open source more palatable to the Fortune 500 set.
In the end, I think this is a better fit than IBM-Sun. Oracle has a lot more synergies with the guys in the converted asylum than big blue.
I for one will miss the flow of odd and non-conventional things from Sun which will surely not be suitable to the rigid Oracle world view.
That is the price you pay with mergers, much lower than the $9.50 a share that Oracle laid out.µ
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Over/Under for the MySQL fork due to Oracle changing the license is at 12 months.
I propose it will be called "OurSQL." You heard it here first, folks.
So you mean to tell me they won't kill mysql at the first chance they get? I guess I'd better download it while it's still free.
Oracle can't 'kill' MySQL at all. The GPL branch will remain free forever, that's sort of the point :)
A new GPLd branch of MySQL will be maintained by others. Now I wouldn't put it past Oracle to completely destroy the 'MySQL' trademark though...
I've basically read this same article on 3 sites now and there has been no mention at all about VirtualBox.
I know that Oracle and VMWare have been good friends in the past, so I wonder what will happen with this situation now that Oracle owns VirtualBox.
At the end of the day my only concerns is that what has been GPL'd stays that way and that Oracle doesn't turn into a Microsoft. Oracle has always been expensive but at least when you spend that money you truly do have a mission critical non-stop system unlike Microsoft's "Mission Critical" view of things.
Oracle kills its biggest competitor. Who would have thunked it?
Same thought here. Download anything from the Sun while you still can!
(Bin/src... everything!)
No no... no no no! This can't be! Felt like this when Compaq took over DEC. F*ck no! There dies another great singularity. I am gonna have to live in denial for a day. F*ck!
DOWNLOAD ALL NOW!!!
Oracle will try find ways to make money.
Providing things doesn't make money, and hosting costs $$$.
Usually the free things are the first to go, next will be jobs.
So get all the candies and java while you can before the help yourself sign is taken down and the candy bowl is empty ;)
They PeopleSoft $10bn, JdEdwards $2bn .. now $7.2bn ... a $20bn purchasing in 3-4 years. MS-Yahoo deal is childsplay infront of aclaimed history's most notorious takeover aka Oracle's PeopleSoft takeover (SAP pulling PeopelSoft's other end). Maybe we can say in light of 8bn MS yearly RnD investment Vs 1bn Oracle RnD yearly investment that MS spends too much on RnD and Oracle spends too much on just shopping intellectual properties.
On the second thought, this would poparly drive people away from JAVA, especially for those who has not yet decided which way to go yet(.NET/JAVA).
M$ would be most welcome the news.
Damn, I think that is the last nail in Unix` coffin. Fisrt SGI now this.. Who else is left.. HP and IBM? They'll prolly be killing it soon too, once all the contracts run their course. Its sad to see, but its just the sign of the times I guess. At least they managed to open-source solaris before the flesh-eating voultures(lawyers) get their hands on all of Sun's IP. Linux will no doubt take over where Unix left off, but the hardware was really top-notch.
Freaking IBM, this is the just another nail coffin for Java. The IBM proposal was making a lot of sense, to us developers anyways.
And now whats the future of Suns SPARC Rock CPU? that autoparallel thingy was awesome.