Oracle and Sun and the key question from many technologists
You can’t step inside an RSS reader or Twitter today without reading about the Oracle/Sun acquisition, so I’ll assume for a moment that most everyone knows that Oracle plans to buy Sun for $7.4B or $9.50 per share in cash. I’ll also assume that everyone has heard Ellison’s definite (and somewhat foreboding, especially if you’re IBM) quote calling Java "the single most important software asset we have ever acquired."
(In movies, this sort of thing is called foreshadowing.)
Regardless, the significance of Java as it relates to Oracle’s own technology roadmaps (Fusion, BEA) notwithstanding, the most prevalent question on Twitter about this deal is: what happens to MySQL now? MySQL is a venerable and widely-adopted open source database, and it has its share of fans and evangelists. What’s to become of such a technology asset when it all-too-likely could be viewed as competition to Oracle’s flagship database business? Will Oracle brass be able to rationalize the MySQL technology into a product/solution silo that makes sense to the market and doesn’t threaten to cannibalize 11g sales?
It’s true that Oracle has its own open-source database offerings in the stable (Berkeley DB, TimesTen), but they’re intended for different applications and customers than MySQL is – namely, use cases where SQL isn’t required at all. And one can’t help but read Oracle’s Customer and Partner letter and realize that MySQL isn’t mentioned once.
When big news breaks, it’s easy to get all huffy trying to read the tea leaves and decipher the nuances of new release language, but this is something many will be keeping on their radar.
