This article interested me:
Computer World: Oracle to provide Sun road map next week
I am curious what this will mean for some of Sun products. The ones that strike my curiosity are:
MySQL: Oracle bought a piece of MySQL already. Now they are buying the whole thing. I wonder what this means to the business model and distribution. Are they going to keep it open source in the same fashion? Note that Oracle already owns the Inno DB Engine for MySQL (see Wikipedia)
Solaris: Oracle already has Unbreakable Linux. So, this makes the second OS for them.
Java: Oracle already has the JRocket VM from Bea. Are they going to merge them, or do they fit different niches?
Virtual Box: Oracle already has their Oracle VM, which is based off of Xen. Again, will they try to merge them?
Hardware: I liked the suggestion that maybe Oracle might offer a Database Appliance with both their software and hardware. The problem is that database implementations are so varied, it would be hard to create a one size fits all solution.
Open Office: I almost forgot this one. This puts Oracle more in competition with Microsoft. This is the one major alternative for MS Office. This could put a big hurting on the world of Linux if Oracle harms Open Office.
Net Beans: Oracle already has JDeveloper. Again, this is more redundancy.
Well, I guess we will find out more tomorrow. Although, I still wonder if they are still changing their plans for PeopleSoft. Sun is such a large company, there is no way they could come up with a perfect plan that they won’t have to change something. We may have to wait 5 years or more to see where they take it.
Other related articles:
Bex Huf: Finally! Oracle Gets Approval for Sun Acquisition!
The H Open Source: Oracle clarifies plans for Java tools and OpenOffice
Information Work: MySQL Users Wary On Oracle Acquisition
What company is next?:
The ORACLE-BASE Blog: Red Hat heading for Oracle buyout?
I remember reading someone mentioning that when Red Hat bought JBoss, it put them in competition with Oracle. Then, we saw Oracle start selling Unbreakable Linux. I wonder if they are really on the radar?
Regarding VurtualBox, wouldn’t it be nice to keep it ? And instead of “merging” with Oracle VM, that would allow to run a VM software on top of an OS. And maybe makes Oracle authorized to provide additional VM images for VirtualBox. That would reduce your effort to translate the Oracle VM images to VirtualBox actually.
Nicolas.