Matthouse

Oracle buys Sun

I’m sure by now most people know that Sun was waiting for some knight in shining armor.  Sun’s major asset is the huge amount of technology (and patents on that technology) they own, and their engineering capabilities.  Back in the day, every internet company owned Sun equipment, leading Sun to adopt the line “we put the Dot in Dot-Com”.  However, they’ve been loosing money ever since the dot-com bust back in 2000, never quite being able to re-gain their footing.  This is mostly because Sun’s core technology, proprietary servers and the patented operating system they run, are becoming increasingly irrelevant because of strong competition from open standards-based hardware and free software (x86 computers and Linux).  They have tried to branch out, releasing the x86 version of their operating system, as well as some other technologies, for free (but still not open), investing heavily in Java and other technologies that everybody find useful, and making acquisitions.

One of those acquisitions was MySQL, which is a free and open-source relational database with excellent performance and useful features that has enormous popularity, even in the medium and large business and enterprise markets.  Sun’s purchase of MySQL made some sense at the time, because MySQL enjoyed a loyal user base, solid revenue from support and licensing (for those who don’t want to play by the open-source rules), and a competent development effort.  Sun wanted to show good faith in their “open-ness” play, and buying MySQL was a relatively cheap way to help support that image.

Fast forward to now.  Most experts believe that Sun can’t survive on their own.  They talked with IBM, which would have made some sense — Big Blue has a large following in the financial and government sectors (where Sun is also well represented).  IBM has been a supporter of Java, previously maintaining their own JRE based on the Java specification (Blackdown Java, which wasn’t very successful).  IBM has also supported a lot of other open technologies, including Linux.  It was not to be, however, and Sun gave IBM the finger after they couldn’t come to terms.

Hours later it would seem, Sun went to the open arms of Oracle, the largest database software vendor.  Oracle’s database product and applications (which obviously require an Oracle database) run really well on Sun’s hardware and operating system, and Oracle’s value proposition looks better when they can sell a “application to disk” solution that is fully integrated, all from one vendor, with one single sales and support channel end-to-end.  The deal is appearently done, see the Sun press release for $9.50 in cash per share.

So where does that leave MySQL (remember MySQL?)…  That’s really tough to say.  MySQL probably represents the single largest threat to the future of Oracle’s database and applications, and this purchase obviously removes that threat.  Oracle says, “MySQL will be an addition to Oracle’s existing suite of database products…”  Oracle Sun FAQ  Missing is any guidance on future development, availability, open-ness, support, etc.  Other bloggers have spouted some pretty wild stuff, both bad and worse.  At the very least, nobody thinks it will be good for MySQL users like myself.

What do you think?