What If Oracle Bought Sun Microsystems?

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister believes Oracle is next in line to make a play for Sun now that IBM has withdrawn its offer. Dismissing server market arguments in favor of Cisco or Dell as suitors, McAllister suggests that MySQL, ZFS, DTrace, and Java make Sun an even better asset to Oracle than to IBM. MySQL as a complement to Oracle's existing database business would make sense, given Oracle's 2005 purchase of Innobase, and with 'the long history of Oracle databases on Solaris servers, it might actually see owning Solaris as an asset,' McAllister writes. But the 'crown jewel' of the deal would be Java. 'It's almost impossible to overestimate the importance of Java to Oracle. Java has become the backbone of Oracle's middleware strategy,' McAllister contends."

Comments

Yahoo! + Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

I say Yahoo and sun should merge. Just think about it, 1. Yahoo makes some cool cloud offerings, 2.sun builds the cloud. 3. ?????? 4. Profits

Re:Yahoo! + Sun

[No2Gates]

What if I bought them and combined Sun Microsystems and a Taqueria? I could cash out my 401k and borrow a couple of hundred dollars from a friend.

Re:Yahoo! + Sun

[Ethanol-fueled]

No, I hope you're joking. Sun's bundling Yahoo Toolbar with java is bad enough. If Oracle were to buy Sun, it would be in their best interests to stop that immediately unless they don't want to be taken seriously. Choice rant from the link:

I find it insulting when applications bundle unrelated crapware like browser toolbars, particularly when the installation selects the extra junk by default...

...software upgrades need to be elegant and streamlined. Bundling in a browser toolbar cheapens the whole experience because it starts looking just like so many other crapware applications that plague the PC industry.

Re:Yahoo! + Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Popular folklore says that Yahoo! management hates Sun to the point that it is surprising there is any Java code running inside the company at all.

Re:Yahoo! + Sun

[BlendieOfIndie]

I think it's more like
1. Yahoo makes some cool cloud offerings
2. Sun builds the cloud
3. Cloud produces rain & thunderstorms
4. Customers hop on the Noah's arc of Google, HP, IBM, etc.

Re:Yahoo! + Sun

[CodeBuster]

What happens when the Sun burns through the clouds?

Re:Yahoo! + Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of what popular folklore may have to say, the reality as explained to me at the time it was happening is that Yahoo! was founded, developed, and intially hosted on hardware borrowed from Sun. Not purchased from Sun. Not rented or leased from Sun, borrowed from Sun. Specifically, customer demo equipment from (IIRC) the Sun office in San Francisco which in turn borrowed additional demo equipment from other offices around California to loan to Yahoo!. There was not a great deal of happiness when Yahoo! finally came into some money and then purchased hardware from (IIRC) HP which hadn't done doodle for them when they were penniless.

Makes sense

[religious freak]

MySQL is the best alternative to Oracle. They could buy mySQL out for a bargain and start putting the screws to all of us that use mySQL to not pay for exorbitant Oracle licenses. Boy... I can't wait.

Re:Makes sense

[nicolas.kassis]

MySQL is forking, I don't think it's going to be an issue if it did happen. Oracle does own BerkleyDB and it's still opensource.

Re:Makes sense

[epiphani]

No it isn't. That's Postgres.

And with the current state of mysql, I wouldn't look at buying Sun for that reason at all. The other assets make far more sense.

Plus, Sun and Oracle have both been major open source supporters, Oracle probably one of the single largest kernel contributor. That would be a good pairing.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL is the best alternative to Oracle.

Not counting PostgreSQL, which is even better.

Re:Makes sense

[rackserverdeals]

I agree. PostgreSQL is much closer to Oracle than MySQL is. Anyone that thinks MySQL is the best replacement for Oracle likely doesn't know much about Oracle.

It seems that sun has done a bit with PostgreSQL as well. Too bad they bought MySQL. They should have instead invested in making PostgreSQL better, at least developing better replication and clustering. That way, PostgreSQL would have been an even stronger alternative to Oracle.

Oracle used to have Solaris/SPARC as their main development platform, then they switched to Linux. That seems to have been a big blow to Sun. While Oracle still releases Oracle for Solaris/Sparc along with Linux, but the Solaris/x86 versions are always slow. I don't 11g has been released for Solaris/x86 yet.

If I was Jonathan Schwartz, I would have rather put the $1bln they spent on MySQL on PostgreSQL. I don't think it would have even really taken that much either. I'm still just baffled over spending $1bln on a company that I think made $50mln in it's best year!?!?!

Anyway... Oracle developers might not have been too happy about moving away from Solaris because they'd lose DTrace.

I thought I heard something about there being some bad blood between Ellison and Sun but I don't know what that was about.

I still think Cisco should be more interested.

Re:Makes sense

[Cyberax]

SystemTap or LTTng might very well appear in the Linux mainline this year. And now they also support use of DTrace tracepoints.

Re:Makes sense

[Maclir]

"MySQL is the best alternative to Oracle" - that's a pretty bold statement. You don't want to add some context? What about large, high transaction databases - DB/2 would probably be the best alternative to Oracle. What about Postgress? What about SQL Server?

Re:Makes sense

[rackserverdeals]

SystemTap or LTTng might very well appear in the Linux mainline this year. And now they also support use of DTrace tracepoints.

Is that supposed to be a joke? I didn't get much sleep last night so maybe I'm missing the sarcasm.

The blog post I linked too told of the transition in 2002. It's now 2009. That's 7 years and the best you can do is say some half-assed knock-offs might be coming to Linux this year?

Re:Makes sense

[Cyberax]

SystemTap and LTTng are actually more powerful than DTrace (no wonder, they benefited from the experience of DTrace). They're just not yet mainline-ready.

http://ltt.polymtl.ca/?q=node/12

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle has no interest in Sun. Oracle just launched the Database Machine/Exadata with HP. Does anyone think that they are going to stab HP in the back and buy Sun? Definitely not.

Oracle is not a hardware company. It doesn't want to be a hardware company. Sun has way too much hardware for Oracle to even consider them.

Re:Makes sense

[Fastball]

They should have instead invested in making PostgreSQL better, at least developing better replication and clustering.

And settling on a sensible case sensitivity methodology that empowers developers rather than hamstrings them.

Re:Makes sense

[larry bagina]

I can only assume you've never used oracle or you've never used mysql. Actually, my first assumption was that you're a retard, but I'm trying to give you the benefit of doubt.

Re:Makes sense

[nicolas.kassis]

Oracle has no allegiance but to itself.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Tis the season to sell IP
Falalalala lalalala
Keep the software pawn the factory
Falalalala lalalala

Arm we now our samurai swords
Falala, lalala, lalala
Ellison hacks Sun into cords
Falalala lalalala

Re:Makes sense

[Vexar]

Feel free to use Oracle XE, which is a free for use version of the Oracle Database. I like how your comment was "MySQL is the best alternative to Oracle" instead of "DB2 is the best alternative to Oracle." Oracle won't buy Sun for a very, very specific reason: Oracle doesn't make hardware, and it isn't their business. Sun still makes boxes. Just because Oracle could buy Sun doesn't mean they want to or it is useful to them. It has to tell a meaningful story, not "we beat up the competition, bought them out, and control the market by default." Buying RedHat? Yes. All of Sun? No. Oracle did buy SleepyCat Software, which I think is great, because it shows their commitment to different solutions. Also, I think it gave them flexibility to put BerkeleyDB into a few of their products.

Neil McAlister is a tool. Although he found a few supportive quotes to his point, he doesn't know anything about Oracle's view on software, much less what they think of Sun's "our products are so good, they're free" attitude. I think Sun has made several mistakes in the last 10 years, and Safra Catz and Charles Phillips don't particularly want to clean up the mess. Where's Neil's quotes from Oracle? Did anyone notice those were completely absent from his article? This is just foolish speculation, not based upon any analysis of Oracle itself.

Having worked with Cisco, I don't think they want Sun, either. For the same sorts of reasons, it isn't a good fit for them. Sun is a loser bet, really. Cisco doesn't suddenly want to go from "a little software in support of their hardware" to something insanely complex like Sun. It just isn't a company that can lead it. IBM was a good fit because they can do hardware and software and operating systems pretty dang well. So, who does that leave? Anyone? Yes. SGI comes to mind for me, too. Can they? Probably not. Would they? Still not so sure. They did both try the "put our Unix on an Intel" idea and failed, so at least they screw up the same way. I sense some compatibility there.

Oracle's money is better spent on making their current acquisitions stronger products than in acquiring a messy company. They aren't after the Sun staff. The good ones have all be competitively hired by the likes of IBM and Oracle already. I sure wish someone on Slashdot who has a friend who is a CEO would pass on the importance of not losing "intellectual capital." You can blame the economy or the 'tards in Washington, DC all you want, but when you get right down to it, a company is people. You lose the right people, you lose the magic, and the company will fail soon after. I think, therefore, that because Sun has lost their magic, and their minds for rejecting IBM's bid, They will continue in a smaller, weaker way, or soon be sliced into divided sales.

Re:Makes sense

[spartacus_prime]

Are you gay?
Are you a fish?
Are you a gay fish?
If so, then the Gay Fish Association of America may be the right place for you!

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011

Just that you're writing in binary ASCII doesn't excuse you for not using proper capitalization. (And, yes, I read that without any aids)

Re:Makes sense

[religious freak]

Nah, maybe I am a retard (as far as this is concerned at least).

I've not used Postgres, and actually don't know much of anything about it, but I've used both mySQL and Oracle casually. I was very surprised when my mySQL DB got to 1 billion rows and actually still worked (though very slowly).

I know DB2 is out there, but from what I've heard it costs an arm and a leg and doesn't offer any distinct advantages unless you're running z/OS.

But yeah, I was somewhat talking out of my ass since I'm not a DB expert (though I have been told by at least a couple people that mySQL was going to give Oracle a real run for their money)... so that's probably why I got a +2 while the person that disagreed with me got a +4. I guess moderation doesn't suck so much after all.

Re:Makes sense

[DragonWriter]

MySQL is the best alternative to Oracle.

If your looking for features and price isn't a big barrier, something like DB2 is more likely to be the best alternative. If license cost is a big concern, Postgres is probably the best alternative for people for whom Oracle would, license cost aside, be a sensible choice. I won't say there aren't places where MySQL is a good choice, but I tend to think there are very few where Oracle would be a good choice and MySQL a good second choice or vice versa.

Re:Makes sense

[larry bagina]

DB2 (and Oracle) have free (but limited) developer/test versions.

Re:Makes sense

[JAlexoi]

at least developing better replication and clustering

There are more burning issues with PostgreSQL then the lack of replication and clustering. Replication and clustering exists, not the best thing, but exists. Where, in-place upgrade is mostly in pre-beta state and works only on 8.0 to 8.1.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

HA HA!

Any more predictions?

My Thoughts

[AKAImBatman]

I think the two companies have some excellent synergies*. My biggest concern with Oracle purchasing Sun (as opposed to the other way around) is that there would be a culture clash. Sun is a very dynamic environment that fosters great new ideas. But unless those core competencies bubble up through Oracle, the Sun portion of the company would be strangled to death.

Personally, I've always wanted to see Sun purchase Oracle. But I don't think that's happening at this point.

* Warning: Corporate buzzword!

Re:My Thoughts

[Red Flayer]

But unless those core competencies bubble up through Oracle,

What?

the Sun portion of the company would be strangled to death.

On what basis do you believe that?

Personally, I've always wanted to see Sun purchase Oracle. But I don't think that's happening at this point.

Considering that Sun is a drop in the bucket (around 5 billion market cap) compared to Oracle (~100 billion), I think you're right. Oracle's been much bigger than Sun for a very long time. Never mind the fact that Oracle's business model is very different from Sun's. It just wouldn't make sense for a traditional software business like Sun to buy a huge service-oriented business like Oracle.

I'm not sure even when it would have been possible for Sun to acquire Oracle. The late 90s? I don't think they could have afforded it even then.

Re:My Thoughts

[recharged95]

There are some departments where Oracle has allowed some freedoms to experiement, those that resulted in the rise of Oracle Text, XMLDB, and Jdev Core, OLS and indirectly with sleepycat and toplink--of course they are not flagship sellers in their product line, but ahead of their time back in the early 2000's.

Put Sun in those related groups and you'll see something on order of IBM Alphaworks and some cool results.

Oracle+Sun will make a good F/OSS ally. Oracle's main goal is DB licenses as they truly believe content is king (and needs to be managed). It is a different take from IBM, which used F/OSS to gain service contracts, which they needed to control the standards to force service frameworks on their customers. Oracle in the end, would rather just sell DBs rather than frameworks (though it makes them some good cash too). In the last 4 yrs. Oracle has gone back to core competencies where as IBM expanded their reach. As for H/W, it can offer new interesting business ventures (Oracle linux stack?).

Now the next in line and a great buyer would be Google. If that happens the whole Stanford brain trust will have come full circle and likely signal the end of the Stanford-Valley dominance. Really.

Re:My Thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun is a very dynamic environment that fosters great new ideas.

Yeah right. That's why Sun's doing so great.

Re:My Thoughts

[AKAImBatman]

Sun can't market their way out of a paper bag. And that's just the God's honest truth. There's nothing inherently wrong with the company besides that.

Re:My Thoughts

[ZachPruckowski]

* Warning: Corporate buzzword!

GAAH!! Put the warning (or at least the asterisk) before the word! It's well documented that overexposure to corporate buzzwords causes headaches, confusion, and eventually IQ loss.

Re:My Thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

Synergies? What synergies? Oracle is a software company and SUN is a hardware company with an identity crisis. Aside from the purchase of JAVA there is no synergy. Oracle would be getting into an entirely new set of business they are not at all competent with. And, why buy SUN? Just wait for them to go under and then buy JAVA in liquidation...its cheaper.

Re:My Thoughts

[Jim Hall]

I think it would be very interesting for Oracle to buy Sun. Here's why:

I'd love to see Oracle create a "black box" database system - you get an install DVD (sold for either SPARC or Intel) and boot your system hardware with it. At install, you indicate what products you want to install, maybe give some license codes, and the DVD automatically installs a database system for you. Want to set up a database that participates in a RAC cluster? There'd be an install option for that. Want to connect to some JBOD or SAN? There'd be an option for that, too. The /etc/system file is pre-tuned, but you get options to provide further tuning (even post-install).

Behind the scenes, the Oracle installer would lay down a hardened, minimal install of [Open]Solaris, and all your storage would be on ZFS. You don't do any "UNIX sysadmin" on this machine because to an administrator, it's just a black box. Think network appliance, or Google-in-a-box.

Sure, you might get an SSH prompt so system DBAs could manually apply patches or do any of the post-install tuning (mentioned above.) But in general, the system downloads patches (operating system, Oracle database, other Oracle software, ..) automatically. You should have an option to have them installed automatically (except for any patches that would require a restart/reboot) or choose to have patches downloaded so you can install them "manually" during scheduled down-time.

A system like this might be very interesting. I had assumed Oracle was going to do something like this a few years ago after they announced their "unbreakable Linux", but nothing really came of it.

Re:My Thoughts

[rthille]

If you think exposure is bad, try having to _use_ them for your job. That drops IQ points at a huge rate!

Re:My Thoughts

[NoOneInParticular]

In the last 4 yrs. Oracle has gone back to core competencies...

WTF? In the last 4 years, Oracle has bought PeopleSoft, Siebel and a plethora of other companies to take over the CRM world. That's not core competence, that's expansion (and in true Oracle form, extremely poorly executed). Ellison probably still thinks he's in a dick-matching context with Gates, yet Gates has moved on.

Re:My Thoughts

[DarkOx]

If your database environment is such that you can "let it download and ... to have them installed automatically" I don't really think you need Oracle at all.

SQL Server 2005 is probably a better fit, its desktop engine variant might even be appropriate. I am not saying SQL Server can't handle big loads either, it can I have personally designed huge ETL processes on it at a F50 company. I am NOT SQL Server bashing, just pointing out that it can do GOOD ENOUGH JOB in a small shop with almost no tweaking and yea WSUS could push patches out to it automatically too; and restart the system after application or not.

The price model on Oracle something like $4,995 per CPU or $149 per user, last time I checked is probably not something sensible for an operation that would consider automatic updates, and appliance like one size fits all installations desirable features.

Re:My Thoughts

[Nimey]

I think the two companies have some excellent synergies*.

* Warning: Corporate buzzword!

Indeed. I'm afraid suicide may be the only way to save your honor.

Re:My Thoughts

[Znork]

I don't think that's entirely true, Sun is quite good at building hype around certain of their products (witness the ZFS! Dtrace! crowd).

They have always been a bit unfocused tho, undermining other marketing efforts (x86! (but use Sparc!) No x86! x86 again!). Interspersed with some plain odd campaigns (was there an actual point to naming everything Java or was it just to outdo Microsoft in relabeling unrelated things by including the ticker?).

It would indeed be sad to see them go or get assimilated by one of the many possible bad partners, but the company frankly got quite wrecked by the web boom/bust and has not yet recovered in many ways.

Re:My Thoughts

[Vexar]

You don't know so much about Oracle internally. Probably a fair statement about their boring "Apps" part, but their Fusion Middleware guys and gals are, same as with IBM, staffed with competitive hires out of Sun.

That said, there is a culture clash. Sun is about everything being done for the sake of doing it, not because it is something the market wants, and certainly Sun is not out to make money with most of their product line free. So, I'd say from an executive level, yes, Oracle (and IBM) don't mix well with Sun's socialist views of software, but making the accusation that Oracle (and IBM) aren't capable of the kind of free-thinking spirits is just not established in facts. You take a look at Gartner's "Magic Quadrant" and see where ol' Sun is versus Oracle or IBM. You've bought too much into their culture, and not looked hard enough at their results.

What direction will Oracle take Java?

[goltzc]

I work at an Oracle shop. Most of my job is writing web apps that obfuscate base Oracle (applications) craziness. On the rare occasion I've had to actually dig into Oracle's Java code I have found my self trying to figure what kind of strange world they are living in. Most of their code seems to not only defy best practices but any semblance of good design.

Maybe its just that the code I've seen has been outsourced stuff that came back in as unclean globs of code but it makes me a little leery to see where Oracle would take Java.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

blah blah blah...I'm the best coder in the world....now I'll bash other countries because they steal american jobs....

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[Unordained]

Have you worked with contractors? It's not about what country they're from -- it's about their contractor status. Of the ones I had, the foreigners were better coders, though poorer communicators. But in all cases, the lack of ownership in the product, of knowledge of the history, business purpose, and architecture of the product, the lack of sense of long-term commitment, of common goal, of responsibility for the outcome (in terms of ongoing maintenance, not just "going live") ... all made my life a lot harder. It's difficult work to get good, solid work out of contractors, and not because they don't mean well. They do. They're great people, sometimes even great coders, but their "wanderer" status has its drawbacks and you have to learn special skills to manage them.

So the GP is correct to worry about the quality of outsourced code.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[timeOday]

Show me a developer who doesn't think everybody else's code is crap.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[kokojie]

Me, I don't think they are crap, I just don't want to deal with them and I just re-write them instead.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[MrEricSir]

I think it's a matter of degree. No developer would complain as long as the code is internally consistent, well-planned, and reasonably bug free.

The thing is, in the real world this almost never happens due to time constraints and too-many-cooks-syndrome.

Worse yet, there are developers with fancy degrees and good jobs who have absolutely no idea what they're doing. Most of us have met one or two such people, and a few of us have had to work with them.

So I don't think it's fair to say that developers always bitch about other people's code; just when it's well deserved. Perhaps if you feel that people always bitch about your code, there's a reason for this and you should take the criticism seriously.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[HiThere]

And the people like that don't all have fancy degrees.

I knew a C coder that was in love with macros with obscure names (like lTsh). I could never figure out WHAT his code was doing. It didn't have an exceptional number of errors...but it was well obfuscated. When he left another person was designated for several years to translate his stuff. (And he was only there a couple of years.) But if you asked him about any particular macro, he could justify why he had created it. (They did shorten the code considerably.)

He left to become a full-time consultant working out of an ISP. I think he did rather well, but I admit that I didn't keep track of him for very long.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

Me! Especially if the performance is within required range, it has 100% coverage on sensible unit tests (according to the provided functional design) and the lint has no comments, why the hell would I want to do more work then necessary?

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe its just that the code I've seen has been outsourced stuff that came back in as unclean globs of code but it makes me a little leery to see where Oracle would take Java.

They'd just be continuing down the road it's on. Bloated, slow, and overly focused on a bunch of little gadgets instead of making the core functionality fast and stable.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[NormalVisual]

I'd much rather work on an extremely buggy system that's well-documented and at least shows signs of cognitive thought being applied to the code, than to have to add stuff to totally bug-free code that looks like a bomb went off in someone's text editor.

I usually get the best of both worlds - tons of bugs, and no fricking clue as to how the code was *intended* to work, as opposed to how it *does* work.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[ClosedSource]

I agree. Developers today (at least the vocal ones) seem to be a lot more interested in putting down the work of others than improving their own. That's why there are sites like The Daily WTF.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Sun is the same way. Neither company can deal with installs or patching correctly. Hell, every security update for Java is a frickin' entire install and breaks a ton of applications.
Oracle apparently does this too. I was kind of hoping a company that could straighten out Java would buy Sun. Or just let Java go completely to FOSS so that the community could fix it and create an actual patching model that doesn't trash things. If Oracle ends up with Java, it will just be busted up worse than it is now.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[phantomfive]

lol learn how to deal with other people's code and you'll find your power as a developer grow exponentially.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[Belial6]

You are absolutely correct. It isn't even always 'bad' that the contractor produces more short term code. I have been a full time contractor to a single company for 10 years now. There is plenty of long term code that I write now for them that I would never have considered writing in the first year I was working for them. Why? Because they had gone through a dozen contractors before me, and much of the long term code I write doesn't get implemented for a couple of years. I have learned the company culture, and can tell what directions the applications will evolve, and thus, I can spend a few extra days writing the parts of the application to be configurable so that when the business requirements (or a person with clout's whim changes) we can just go in and flip a switch to get the new required functionality.

Burning hours/money to make those options configurable would be irresponsible for someone that doesn't know the company culture, or if it is unlikely that they will be used because the next contractor isn't even going to be aware that it is there. This becomes even more so when you implement half of a feature because you are already making a change to that part of an application suite, and you know that a year or two down the line the functionality will be needed for work you will be doing on another piece of the suite.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[El_Oscuro]

We have one word for this:

JavaCrap

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[thetoadwarrior]

10 years as a contractor means they're screwing you and with the economy being shit you, assuming you're still with them, means they can drop you at any time. That doesn't necessarily mean much for you if others are will to hire you shortly afterwards.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[Belial6]

I don't know about where you live, but where I live, an employer can fire you without reason at any time.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[dgriff]

Have you worked with contractors? [...] the lack of ownership in the product, of knowledge of the history, business purpose, and architecture of the product, the lack of sense of long-term commitment, of common goal, of responsibility for the outcome [...]

*sigh* I miss those days

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[D-Cypell]

Me! Actually most developers I think.

The reason we think that (almost) everybody else's code is crap is because much of it is. The mistake that we make is to assume it is crap because the original coder was an idiot, when in most cases it is crap because of unrealistic time pressures placed on the developer, or some basic mistake in the foundation that acts like a ball of crap that radiates outwards.

I have seen quite a few pieces of open source code that I would regard as awesome in terms of code quality (not in a way that is too subjective either, good naming conventions, good structure, good comments etc), these are the projects I contribute to. People pay me to wade through a quagmire of crappy code, when I do it for free, I want to work with the good stuff.

I suggest that you would be better to say... "Show me a developer who understands *why* everybody else's code is crap"... generally it is not down to idiocy.

Re:What direction will Oracle take Java?

[Just Some Guy]

Me. There's "code I would have written differently", but that's just style. That's completely different from "code that should be taken out back and shot".

Am I the only one?

[More_Cowbell]

Am I the only one that hopes Sun changes it's mind about selling itself and succeeds on its own? I know they have made some big strategic errors that have gotten them where they are now, but it is a solid company (imho) with, from what I've seen, superior products. Grossly undervalued for some time now.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Neil Watson]

Sun certainly have some good products. I often think that they need to focus a bit more. They have their fingers in many pies but can't be good at all of them.

At the moment I have no confidence in Sun. They were considering selling to IBM which potentially could have resulted in many of Sun's key products being discontinued. If Sun is willing to 'sell the farm' why should I buy their products? If Sun doesn't believe in their own future how can I believe in it?

Re:Am I the only one?

[davecb]

Sun's a hardware company, and the pie they are in is singular, there: dealing with the memory bottleneck by coming up with new processor designs that don't spend all their time sitting in queue waiting for an I- or D-cache load. Most of the research is there, because it's a problem all the chip vendors are faced with. if they don't do it, they will die.

On the product side, you're mostly seeing the necessary support a hardware company needs (Solaris), the languages (Java, TCL, etc) and the combinations of software and hardware that lead to better price-performance in their products (ZFS and flash write caches for storage performance, cheap). I see the latter as mostly development and maintenance, which is a,lot easier and cheaper than the research (;-))

--dave

Re:Am I the only one?

[phantomfive]

Yes, I agree completely. However, the only way it will happen is if they become a more customer oriented company. Right now they make amazing things that no one really wants, and try to convince people to buy it. They need to figure out what people actually do want, and build it for them. If they can figure out how to do that and still make amazing things, they will succeed.

Re:Am I the only one?

[goltzc]

They have tons of talent in that company and some really superb products. They just need to figure out how to market themselves properly and make some money.

Re:Am I the only one?

[David Gerard]

Hence Jonathan Schwartz' attempts to use open source as Sun's "Hail Mary" pass.

Re:Am I the only one?

[downix]

I'm with you here.  Sun is very lean, and can survive the downturn with the cash reserve they have as/is.  If I was Sun, I'd redouble efforts into bringing more in-house, and consolidating positions of strength.  I'd also work on diminishing, or eliminating the departmental infighting that continues to plague them.

Re:Am I the only one?

[blind biker]

NO, absolutely not the only one - that's my hope as well. But the truth is, Sun is a company that gave a lot to the world in which it exists, and monetized very little of it. It's the greatest open source contributor (Solaris, Java, OpenOffice, the SPARC architecture itself, NetBeans, ZFS... and I'm sure missing some, as Sun gave away HUGE amounts of stuff).

Such companies don't usually succeed in a commercial sense. I'm tempted to say that Sun should cease to be a for-profit publicly traded company, and become either a state-sponsored institution, or private foundation, for the development of high-tech.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm with you. oh $deity save us from oracle.

if they really have to sell sigh i say wiht a heavy heart I.B.M

Re:Am I the only one?

[rackserverdeals]

I hope they do too. I think they need to come up with an extra $500 million by this summer otherwise they might be in some trouble. That's going to be hard to do in this current economic climate.

I wonder if they asked for a bailout. I think even IBM did.

Re:Am I the only one?

[goltzc]

I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Am I the only one?

[blitzkrieg3]

Sun certainly have some good products. I often think that they need to focus a bit more. They have their fingers in many pies but can't be good at all of them.

Split the hardware from the software. Open Solaris runs on x86, java is almost a killer app, etc...

They would have a much easier time selling the software side, in my estimation.

Re:Am I the only one?

[fabriciom]

I see I'm not the only stock holder =) here. I also agree with you. Get rid of McNeal which is the first one looking to sell Sun.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think Scott McNealy thinks they'll do it too. Probably when they put out ZFS2, the 512bit filesystem....

If you've seen "superior products" from Sun, then you haven't looked at much. Their hardware is positively ordinary, compared to their competition, it's generous to say they are only 2 generations behind. Their OS, while it is decent, its competition is often ahead of and generally runs on much better hardware. Sure they've got a filesystem with some nice specs and a great tracing tool but the reality is that other than fanboys in spec pissing contests a remarkably small percentage of the market actually will even notice those. The other fact is that they have generated a fan base and a remarkably small number of folks have seriously used either.

Re:Am I the only one?

[More_Cowbell]

I don't own any stock. I also would not know exactly what they need to do... I sort of thought they were getting back on the right track just before the recession hit. I thought the push towards open source was a great idea, if quite belated. Also the Sun/Microsoft Windows Server OEM deal (September 12, 2007, just as the economy was about to really slide) was a huge shift in attitude from the bitter rivalry of the past. That was obviously in the works for some time, and (imho) a good idea, but again late.

Re:Am I the only one?

[More_Cowbell]

It's the greatest open source contributor (Solaris, Java, OpenOffice, the SPARC architecture itself, NetBeans, ZFS... and I'm sure missing some, as Sun gave away HUGE amounts of stuff).

That is one of the things I really love about them. However, I have heard it postulated by many people that they waited too long to go that route. Waiting so long to open source Solaris prevented them from competing with Linux effectively in the server OS market. And, while you certainly can, not many buy a SUN box to run Red Hat (or whatever).

Re:Am I the only one?

[Anonymous Coward]

references? they're not lean enough to not loose money http://www.google.com/finance?q=java
and it looks like at the current clip, they're out
of money in 10 quarters.

Re:Am I the only one?

[mikael]

Their major strength seemed to be that they could provide a complete single vendor solution for corporations. A company could buy the servers, workstations, graphics cards, device drivers and OS all from the same company. If there was ever a problem such as a memory leak or device driver crash, all the staff would be in-house to get the problem fixed. This is the same service that their other competitors used to offer until they switched to Microsoft.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Courageous]

The basic issue is that the analysts are right. Sun customers have been secretly worried about Sun's ability to go it alone for quite some time... their stock price, you know, dropped a lot. We noticed. Now Sun has put itself on the market, declaring that its own management team /knows/ that it can't go it alone. This undermines our confidence as Sun customers. The putting up of Sun for sale is almost a no-return event. IBM backing out of the deal is a disaster for them.

C//

Re:Am I the only one?

[Ilgaz]

It is damn hard to find the source (as the man is very famous) but it is almost exactly what Steve Jobs said, about Xerox. Such great technologies and inventions but they can't make money with them.

Re:Am I the only one?

[turkeyfish]

You have not watched Sun closely enough to realize that its executive suite is divorced from its technical divisions. The sale has more to do with salvaging big golden parachutes for McNeally and other execs than it has with either shareholder's benefits or the longterm viability of the company. Once they have a buyer for the parachutes, the rest can simply fall wherever.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Ilgaz]

Yesterday I went to Java community sites and Symbian community sites. You know what? I have questions about both Symbian Foundation/Nokia Smart phone business and Sun Java, on Desktop.

It really seems they lost their direction already and completely wasting their own inventions. Nokia on other hand, easily talks about the need to upgrade device hardware to get OS updates while some people (not much) are excited about Symbian Foundation.

One must wonder, how come Sun doesn't figure Apple doesn't give a shit to their Java and stop sitting there and waiting for Apple to do the work for free? How BIG deal this Cocoa is? Hell with it, I don't buy it anymore, it is their laziness and they blame the only closed part of OS X, that is all. If they wanted, they could just release Sun JRE 1.6 for OS X console and X11, it is easy.

OS X PowerPC users will never, ever see Java 6 natively running on their system. It is so obvious now. I can understand it but a Fortune 500 company creating the language can't?

You could be surprised how similar Nokia Smart Phone (Symbian) and Sun are. Allthough Nokia can happily sell S40 phones and keep being leader of phone sales. They may even make more money than today as S40 won't cost that much to develop for. What will Sun do? Sell desktops/laptops running Vista?

IBM could give the direction and discipline. The confidence on Sun technologies would go amazingly high. It is sad that they missed the chance.

Re:Am I the only one?

[MavenCCIE]

You are NOT alone. Sun is an incredible company with some management issues that can be resolved.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Anonymous Coward]

I asked a fellow at Sun about this a few years back, when Java updates started to lag more and more behind on OSX. It seems that Apple said they would do the Java implementation on OSX, sun said "Fine, go for it, we're here if you need anything" and then Apple quietly stopped updating it.

Re:Am I the only one?

[downix]

Puts them with microsoft, who are due to run out in 10 as well....only Microsoft is loosing $2 billion a quarter while Sun is only loosing a few hundred million.  Far easier to make up a few hundred million shortfall than two billion.

Re:Am I the only one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun just let go nearly their entire sales staff. They want to be bought out.

Re:Am I the only one?

[blind biker]

Very good point! Sun has it all sewn up: complete hardware (inlcuding motherboard, netcard, controllers etc.) - the CPU - the OS - Java - a RAD solution - a DB solution - and last but not least (heck, probably not even last): a complete storage solution, including enterprise backup.

then sun

[nimbius]

could enjoy not only running a custom linux distribution into the ground, but the hardware to run it on as well!

SAP won't like that...

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of SAP stuff uses Java. You bet SAP will do everything they can to prevent Oracle buying Sun.

Re:SAP won't like that...

[clarkkent09]

A lot of the world including Oracle uses Java. I don't think they would do anything to sabotage Java if they did get to own it

Everytime I see this phrase...

[mooingyak]

It's almost impossible to overestimate the importance of Java to Oracle

Java will help Oracle colonize the entire solar system.

Re:Everytime I see this phrase...

[GPLDAN]

You get to landing on Titan, only to find out you have the wrong JRE installed.

Picture of spaceship crater, with caption: FAIL

Re:Everytime I see this phrase...

[davecb]

The Mars stuff was OK, though (;-))

--dave

Re:Everytime I see this phrase...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's almost impossible to overestimate the importance of Java to Oracle

Java will help Oracle colonize the entire solar system.

You did it sir, you did it.

Re:Everytime I see this phrase...

[Anonymous Coward]

I attended a pretty cool talk on Real-Time Java some years ago, in which the Sun guy said they have in fact been pitching it for spacecraft embedded system use for ages - it's impressive technology, and up to the job. Success has been limited though, because as good as the JVM is these days it still needs more RAM than VxWorks (NASA's weapon of choice), increasing launch mass by a small but significant amount.

Re:Everytime I see this phrase...

[alexj33]

Mission Control: We're trying to contact Satellite XR-546....Hello? Hello?

Satellite XR-546: (nothing)

Mission Control: Hello? Hello?

Satellite XR-546: (nothing)

Mission Control: Hello?

Satellite XR-546: Blip... Blip...

Mission Control: That's funny... after compensating for the speed of light and the distance of the spacecraft, there's an extra lag in time in the response for some reason...

Satellite XR-546: Blip...(lag!).... Blip...

Be more serious:

[Anonymous Coward]

What If Oracle Bought Sun Microsystems?

Well, then 2 poorly managed companies would be together. The employees would fight with each other for dominance.

"... Sun Microsystems and a Taqueria?" You aren't taking this sufficiently seriously. It's spelled Taquería, with an accent mark. There, fixed that.

This is the kind of seriousness we need at times like this: The big news is not Soracle, it is a merger between Microsoft and, well, read the headline. Microsoft acquires the Catholic Church.

It has taken 15 years to arrange the merger, because Satan felt that the connection with the CC might lessen his complete, overwhelming power.

Strange Database Merge...

[__aaclcg7560]

So what's left of the database market if Oracle and Sun merged together? Oracle vs. Access vs. ???

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[AKAImBatman]

So what's left of the database market if Oracle and Sun merged together?

I don't see anything changing. Right now we have a 3-way fight between three heavyweights: Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. Everyone else is unimportant.

However, IBM and Microsoft have other competencies and sources of revenue. Oracle does not. In result, Oracle has been looking for new ways to enter the low-end market. So owning MySQL could be a boon for them, but it wouldn't significantly change the market.

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[Fallingcow]

MSSQL? PostgreSQL?

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[eln]

Putting Access as a competitor to Oracle...that's funny.

In Oracle's class would be guys like MS SQL Server and IBM's DB2. Access is the DB small companies foolishly build apps on and then deal with pain and ridicule until they move off it.

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[Chris Mattern]

Oracle vs. Access

So, what's next on your fight card? Space Marines vs. Pee-Wee Herman? Guillermo Jones vs. 6-year-old Timmy from down the block?

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[Maclir]

Oracle is a true relational database management system. As is DB/2, Postgress, SQL Server, mySQL....

Access is ... words fail me. The last developer here that suggested using Access was summarily shot, hung, drawn and quartered, and his head posted on a spike at the door to the computer room as a warning to others.

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[alen]

last few years Oracle has bought a lot of application companies. BEA, Peoplesoft and a long list of others

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that works in the IT department, but when a bunch of yahoos from other departments somehow manage to get a copy of MS Access and build entire "applications" with horrible GUI front ends and roll them out to the rest of the company behind the IT departments back... that's when the fun begins.

Sounds like a great horror video game:
Your task is to hunt down unauthorized Access applications and convert them to stable client server business applications developed and supported by your IT department.

Oooo scary!

I can only imagine the sequel: Excel macros used to launch winforms!

Noooooooooooooooo!!!!!

I was at a conference a few years back where one of the speakers actually ACTUALLY recommended using MS Access as a back end for your small business solutions!

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[afidel]

What?!? Oracle has 3 of the top 5 ERP platforms, 2 of the top 3 middleware platforms, and a few of the top BI platforms. In fact at this point Oracle probably makes as much or more of their revenue from application and middleware licensing than they do from database licensing. They also have a 10,000+ employee consulting arm.

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[Anonymous Coward]

$5 on Pee-Wee Herman

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[__aaclcg7560]

Commander Keen vs. Pee-Wee Herman :P

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[Red Flayer]

However, IBM and Microsoft have other competencies and sources of revenue. Oracle does not. In result, Oracle has been looking for new ways to enter the low-end market. So owning MySQL could be a boon for them, but it wouldn't significantly change the market.

Oracle has no other competencies?[1] Are you sure about that -- have you read their annual report anytime in the past couple years? Oracle's service LOB is growing quickly (currently 21% of revenues, and growing), and has good margins. Never mind the middleware portion of their licensing revenues, which is also growing fast.

[1] Dude, please stop using buzzwords, especially when you use them improperly. You sound like all the awful PHBs that use words without knowing what they mean. 'Competencies' does not mean 'Lines of Business', nor does it mean 'Divisions'.

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[DarkOx]

Dude, I can't wait to see that! Access is going to schooled pretty hard in most events but when they get to the VBA execution contest Oracle is going to crying home to mommy!

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[BitZtream]

They'd probably rather have PostgreSQL which already has front ends for it that can make it behave a lot like Oracle and take direct connections from Oracle clients, since it is an actual transactional database, unlike the afterthought MySQL calls transaction support.

If MySQL was worth its salt, Sun would probably use it rather than PostgreSQL in the xVM suite. Its generally a sign that your not that great when the company that owns you, picks a product that they don't own to use rather than the one they do own.

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[Haley's Comet]

...deal with pain and ridicule until they move off it.

And that's just from the software. You get pencils (chairs?) flung at you from other staff...

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[DragonWriter]

They'd probably rather have PostgreSQL which already has front ends for it that can make it behave a lot like Oracle and take direct connections from Oracle clients, since it is an actual transactional database, unlike the afterthought MySQL calls transaction support.

Eh, I think Oracle already has a few actual transactional database engines. MySQL, as an SQL-wrapper with modular storage backends that useful for a variety of purposes (including using at least one of Oracle's engines) is probably a more useful addition to Oracle's portfolio.

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[Frankie70]

Have you heard of DB2 & SQL Server?
They are #2 & #3, I think. Not MySQL.

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[BitZtream]

What are you talking about? I didn't say anything about Oracle having different backends, I said that PostgreSQL already fits well into the Oracle world, MySQL is a joke to anyone except crappy web developers (read as PHP hackers) fresh out of school.

PostgreSQL makes a natural first step to later moving to Oracle because PostgreSQL can already be made to act A LOT like Oracle without the high end features. Making MySQL anywhere near as powerful as PostgreSQL would almost require starting from scratch as all of its 'high end' features are bolted on in an absolutely horrible way because they are an after thought. If you're going to have to rewrite it to make it not suck and fit into your world, you might as well take the other system that already fits into your world instead.

I have a distinct feeling you haven't actually used a real database engine.

Re:Strange Database Merge...

[DragonWriter]

What are you talking about?

I'm talking about what would be a useful addition to Oracle's assets.

I didn't say anything about Oracle having different backends,

No, I said something about MySQL being useful to Oracle because it can support different backends.

I said that PostgreSQL already fits well into the Oracle world,

PostgreSQL, of open source DB servers, does a great job of approximating what Oracle's existing DB products do, but, Oracle doesn't need to acquire anything to replicate what it already has.

MySQL is a joke to anyone except crappy web developers (read as PHP hackers) fresh out of school.

MySQL's multi-backend architecture is generally useful and gives it the capacity to be a flexible framework, which would have some synergy with Oracle's existing assets. I don't think PostgreSQL offers as much to Oracle that they don't already have (even though I think that PostgreSQL is a far better DB product for most uses than MySQL.)

PostgreSQL makes a natural first step to later moving to Oracle because PostgreSQL can already be made to act A LOT like Oracle without the high end features.

Oracle has a whole series of products based on the same code base that do that already, and if they wanted to scale them down to a simpler versions, it would be a whole lot easier to do that from that code base than to acquire or fork PostgreSQL for that purpose.

Making MySQL anywhere near as powerful as PostgreSQL would almost require starting from scratch as all of its 'high end' features are bolted on in an absolutely horrible way because they are an after thought.

So? Does Oracle need to acquire anything it doesn't already own to have a database engine as powerful as PostgreSQL.

If you're going to have to rewrite it to make it not suck and fit into your world, you might as well take the other system that already fits into your world instead.

Again, Oracle doesn't need to acquire something that provides what they already have, they benefit by acquiring technology that's useful features are substantially different from what it already has.

I have a distinct feeling you haven't actually used a real database engine.

I use Oracle in an enterprise environment daily; I've used PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite on a smaller scale and less frequently, and I've done a tiny amount of toying around with Oracle XE, SQL Server, DB2, and a number of non-relational databases. Of those, I see MySQL as the least useful on its own, but I think that it has some unique value to bring to Oracle that PostgreSQL doesn't have in the same way, and that has the potential for interesting synergy with Oracle's existing strengths. I have a distinct feeling you have trouble understanding what adds value to an existing product line.

Slashdot shoud buy Sun . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

. . . if we can get all those Anonymous Cowards and folks with ridiculous names like mine to chip in $10 each.

The company's direction and strategy could be guided by a Slashdot thread. A potent brew of "Informative, Interesting, Troll . . ."

Hell, maybe we could even patent that business model . . . crowd governance . . . or mod governance?

Re:Slashdot shoud buy Sun . . .

[McNihil]

Design by committee is never ever a good thing. You get a product that wants to be everything for everybody and ends up doing stuff with too much compromise instead.

Do one thing and one thing really good and everything else follows.

Re:Slashdot shoud buy Sun . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

All open source development is "designed by committee".
Take Linux. It's designed by committee and proud of it.
Yet it is destined to always be a niche player, while closed source strong-individual-driven systems like Windows and OS X rule the day.

Re:Slashdot shoud buy Sun . . .

[eln]

Unless we're shooting for the Guinness Book record for fastest bankruptcy in history, I would caution against letting Slashdotters decide anything more significant than which goatse mirror site to try and get people to click to.

Re:Slashdot shoud buy Sun . . .

[Gorphrim]

Or "mod rule"

Re:Slashdot shoud buy Sun . . .

[MiniMike]

Not by a thread, the direction of the company should be decided by a Slashdot Poll. You think people complain about lack of options now, just wait. Also, I'm looking forward to the ads for the next release of Oracle (12?) codenamed 'CowboyNeal' (new feature- new tables automatically get filled with a line that says 'Frist data!!11!!!').

Re:Slashdot shoud buy Sun . . .

[teko_teko]

To get $6 billion at $10 each, we will need 600 million Slashdot members...

Maybe it's time to open Slashdot.cn

Re:Slashdot shoud buy Sun . . .

[HiThere]

No. Linux is written by committee, but the design is by Linus. Similarly with Python, except the design is by BFDL Guido. Other projects have other heads...but the heads tend to be singular.

Note that the nominal authority of the FOSS project heads tends to be considerably more absolute than we would tolerate in most other areas. They can toss code on a whim. But this is restrained in the successful project because they mustn't alienate their developers...and they can't offer anything except acceptance (and a minimal bit of self-promotion).

Note also that anyone can fork a FOSS project, but very few such projects ever get far enough to even be noticed, much less release anything useful. Managing a FOSS project is a difficult art, and somehow you've got to fund both yourself and the project. It's cheap as things go, but it sure isn't free.

Re:Slashdot shoud buy Sun . . .

[Haley's Comet]

I would donate $50. (Just remember that the mod system isn't fool-proof.)

Re:Slashdot shoud buy Sun . . .

[mdmarkus]

Start putting together a deal. Publicize it. Be open and transparent. If you're legitimate and it's viable, I'll put in a lot more than $10.

What if Oracle owned MySQL?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

It would be quite ironic ... MySQL has had to deal with Oracle acquiring InnoDB and then Sleepycat (Berkeley DB) ... multiple times they had to rework MySQL's underpinnings because they didn't want Oracle to own key parts of the platform. If Oracle were to be in control of MySQL they'd be able to "un-deprecate" (reprecate?) those engines.

I'd like to see that, actually -- Berkeley DB is an amazingly robust data store. It worked well with MySQL.

Re:What if Oracle owned MySQL?

[BitZtream]

Yay, they could add back the other shitty backends again, that would make MySQL worth using for something other than a bad teaching tool for school kids ... not.

Mom! Dad! Don't touch it! It's EEEeeeevil!

[drinkypoo]

I am so not comfortable with Oracle being in charge of one of the remaining UNIX vendors... Better to see another UNIX license holder get them than that.

Re:Mom! Dad! Don't touch it! It's EEEeeeevil!

[lotho brandybuck]

I agree completely.. IBM would've been great.

Code can fork. Licenses can generate lawsuits and intimidation forever.

Re:Mom! Dad! Don't touch it! It's EEEeeeevil!

[Anonymous Coward]

Better to see another UNIX license holder get them than that.

Yes, but I doubt the SCO have the funding required to purchase Sun.

* Posted anonymously for obvious reasons

Synergy!

[David Gerard]

Where "synergy" is another word for "2+2=1". This could produce even more economic value than Microsoft plus Yahoo! would have.

Forks of everything forkable approaching in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

A Strategic Solution

[Hangtime]

If they could both bury the hatchet for about 5 minutes, a joint bid by Oracle and IBM would actually make much more sense. IBM would take the Solaris platform and hardware, Oracle would take the ZFS, MySQL, and DTrace. They could then both jointly purchase and spin-off Java into an Open Source project or its own firm with each company taking a stake. Since both rely so heavily on Java and neither would enjoy the other firm owning the platform it makes perfect sense for it to continue as an independent entity.

Re:A Strategic Solution

[MarkWatson]

Your post is the best idea in this entire thread. I agree. Although I have been using Ruby and Lisp more the last few years, much of my business is based on Java -- basically the whole world wants a stable and well maintained Java platform and a spin off company for Java might make sense, especially if many large stakeholders owned equity.

Re:A Strategic Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

That's really a tough call either way I think. If IBM takes the Solaris OS, it just gets tossed in a pile with their other Unix & Linux offerings and goes from being the flagship product of a (dying) company to just another OS.

But then if Oracle takes the OS, they may be tempted to optimize Oracle and Solaris to work better together, which is risky considering the mass migration of Oracle servers from Unix to Linux.

Either way MySQL is probably in danger. If they got traded to Oracle they become the redheaded stepchild that the uber DBAs mock. Pretty much the same with IBM and DB2.

I love the idea of Java becoming an open source solution though!
Honestly it seems like Java has always been treated like it's part of the open source community anyways, I think it would be a welcome addition.

Re:A Strategic Solution

[drinkypoo]

a spin off company for Java might make sense, especially if many large stakeholders owned equity.

This would be the slowest way to murder Java. But a slow murder is still murder... Java would be pulled in every direction and asplode.

Re:A Strategic Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Solaris without ZFS and Dtrace losts all interest.

Re:A Strategic Solution

[Wodin]

Although I have been using Ruby and Lisp more the last few years, much of my business is based on Java

You might want to have a look at Clojure

Clojure is a dynamic programming language that targets the Java Virtual Machine. It is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming. Clojure is a compiled language - it compiles directly to JVM bytecode, yet remains completely dynamic. Every feature supported by Clojure is supported at runtime. Clojure provides easy access to the Java frameworks, with optional type hints and type inference, to ensure that calls to Java can avoid reflection.

Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, and shares with Lisp the code-as-data philosophy and a powerful macro system. Clojure is predominantly a functional programming language, and features a rich set of immutable, persistent data structures. When mutable state is needed, Clojure offers a software transactional memory system and reactive Agent system that ensure clean, correct, multithreaded designs.

So where does this leave Open Souce?

[Anonymous Coward]

While Sun may not be the strongest FOSS advocate, they've made many adjustments over the past few years to open up several products.

Is Oracle likely to have the same philosophies when it comes to this stuff? I don't know Oracle as an organization too well, but I have a feeling they'd go into 'lockdown' mode of Sun's projects if they bought 'em.

Thoughts?

Re:So where does this leave Open Souce?

[joe_bruin]

While Sun may not be the strongest FOSS advocate, they've made many adjustments over the past few years to open up several products.

Stop right there. Sun is one of the biggest corporate contributors to open source. Go ahead, count lines of code. I'm betting Sun will be in the top two if not #1.

Here's a brief list of things Sun has open sourced:
Solaris - Their entire OS, including ZFS and Dtrace
SPARC - Their CPU line
Java - Maybe you've heard of it.
OpenOffice - The office suite that ships with every desktop Linux distribution.
VirtualBox - A GPL desktop virtual machine.
NetBeans IDE - A multi-platform IDE.
OpenDS - LDAP Directory Server
High Availability Cluster

Honorable mention:
NFS - The Network File System
vi - developed by Sun founder Bill Joy
MySQL - Now owned and maintained by Sun-paid engineers

So, next time you say Sun hadn't done much for open source, look again. It would be a shame if Sun was bought by Oracle and all of their valuable contributions were abandoned.

Re:So where does this leave Open Souce?

[GNUbuntu]

While Sun may not be the strongest FOSS advocate

lolwut? Sun has been one of the biggest FOSS advocates for almost a decade. What rock have you been living under?

Re:So where does this leave Open Souce?

[Nevyn]

Stop right there. Sun is one of the biggest corporate contributors to open source. Go ahead, count lines of code. I'm betting Sun will be in the top two if not #1.

Here's a brief list of things Sun has open sourced:

• Solaris - Their entire OS, including ZFS and Dtrace
• SPARC - Their CPU line
• Java - Maybe you've heard of it.
• OpenOffice - The office suite that ships with every desktop Linux distribution.
• VirtualBox - A GPL desktop virtual machine.
• NetBeans IDE - A multi-platform IDE.
• OpenDS - LDAP Directory Server
• High Availability Cluster
• NFS

Solaris was only "released" after Linux had repeatedly shown Sun that being proprietary was a bad idea. And even now OpenSolaris != Solaris, plus you won't need both hands to count the number of external contributors.

SPARC, that's nice ... you know many OpenSource developers who have chip fabrication plants?

Java ... yeh, after IBM, Red Hat, SuSE, GNU, etc. spent 10 years reimplementing most of it. And Mono had mostly implemented C# 1.0. So they were basically forced to open it, or become as irrelivant as they are in the OS world.

OpenOffice ... yeh, well done. They had a flash of insight (for once) that they couldn't possibly compete with it without open sourcing it.

Netbeans ... again was proprietary, got shot in the face by eclipse, was reluctantly released (hmm, sounds familiar).

OpenDS - yeh, I know a lot of people using this instead of OpenLDAP or Fedora/RH directory server.

NFS - They made a single code drop at the begining, to make it a std., so they could sell "the good implementation" which was only in Solaris (and never released until decades later).

ZFS - Same deal, they've released it as narrowly as possible to try and make it a std. ... and it looks like BTRFS is going to shoot them in the face, just like something did every other time.

So, sure, by lines of code dumped onto the 'net Sun are an open source company. In pretty much any other way of evaluating it though, they suck.

Re:So where does this leave Open Souce?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun didn't have anything to do with MySQL becoming FOSS - that was done long before Sun spent $1B on it. I don't think we can credit Sun with anything but poor judgment on that one.

Re:So where does this leave Open Souce?

[m50d]

You forgot TCL! Why is everyone always forgetting about TCL?

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Is Slashdot Short Of News: +1, Helpful

[Anonymous Coward]

What if China bought Sun Microsystems?

What if China buys the U.S.A.?

What if China buys Chrysler, G.M., AND Ford?

Yours In Communism,
Kilgore Trout

Not Oracle, Microsoft..

[WarwickRyan]

Really, Microsoft are obviously the best fit to buy them.

Just like in the days of Windows 3.1, Microsoft need an new OS to replace the old mess they currently have. Back then they nicked NT from IBM. Now they can have Solaris.

They're obviously admirers of Java, given how they've effectively created Java++ (C#). So that's an nice fit. They'd also be buying their way into every single educational institution in the world.

Finally they're well placed to use MySQL as the basis for the next version of Access, giving them a nice up sell to SQL Server.

Sun shining through the Windows. You heard it here first, folks.

Re:Not Oracle, Microsoft..

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought they nicked NT from DEC

Re:Not Oracle, Microsoft..

[gbjbaanb]

I doubt it, why would they bother with MySQL (unless its part of an 'upgrade' path to SQL Server).

MS already has SQL Server express, and developer edition versions so I'm not sure why they'd want to take MySQL on. I'm sure they're just waiting for Access to die naturally, or only keeping it around for legacy reasons.

And as for Java, they made J++ so this is 5 years too late for them, they don;t want Java now - they're more interested in converting Java devs to C# (and Windows lock-in, obviously)

Re:Not Oracle, Microsoft..

[Anonymous Coward]

you got it all backwards they took NT from digital

http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/4494/windows-nt-and-vms-the-rest-of-the-story.html

Re:Not Oracle, Microsoft..

[BitZtream]

MySQL and Access are NOTHING a like.

Do you think MySQL would be a good replacement for VBA? Thats basically what you are saying.

People don't use Access because its a database, they use Access because its a VBA front end with some support for database-like data stores. Those data stores can easily be swapped out for a real database server backend if needed. MySQL would need a lot of development to make it suitable as a replacement for the Jet backend. Sure, MySQL is going to be far faster, but faster doesn't mean shit if it doesn't do what you need it to.

Access is more about VBA, forms, and making it so middle managers and the like can write simple little apps to store, manage and access their data WITHOUT running a server.

If you want to run a server than you use Access with MS SQL server express edition, which other than the connection and processor limits is far more useful than MySQL in just about every way.

MySQL isn't really useful to anyone, its only advantage is that its free, and MS already has better products that are free. So unless you're planning on being Wikipedia or some other site with massive traffic with little editing and no real transactions, if you're using MySQL its because you don't know what you are doing.

If you want a real database, and still free and OSS, you use PostgreSQL. There are very few cases where MySQL is actually a better choice, and its never going to be a good fit for Access which already has better transaction support than MySQL, even if it does perform a lot worse.

MySQLs time has come and gone, they stagnated while they were trying to figure out how to make money off OSS and now they are so far behind that they might as well start over. Let it die in peace.

Re:Not Oracle, Microsoft..

[drinkypoo]

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Sun and Microsoft have been getting together for some time now. It makes more sense than probably anything else. Not really sure what they would do with SPARC, though. Threaten intel with it, then give it to them?

Re:Not Oracle, Microsoft..

[ferrgle]

I agree.
Microsoft would probably like to have a slice of the Server making pie.
But would that scare off their software buying customers?

Re:Not Oracle, Microsoft..

[Haley's Comet]

Not really sure what they would do with SPARC, though.

I don't know, but their stamp on the box? M$ got sick of windows games not making them shitloads of money and made a console (ala Xbox 1 & 360). I have a M$ keyboard and laser mouse, good products. I hate their software, but their hardware seems good enough (except the 360 - google RRoD). If M$ did so well with the Xbox, how about server boxes being single vendor solution (HW & SW)?

Re:Not Oracle, Microsoft..

[kv9]

So unless you're planning on being Wikipedia or some other site with massive traffic with little editing and no real transactions, if you're using MySQL its because you don't know what you are doing.

you mean like Slashdot? you do know about Slashdot, right? all these people must be crazy for using a database with a performance profile that fits their read/write ratio.

If you want a real database, and still free and OSS, you use PostgreSQL.

is that why Google uses PG? I'm actually being sarcastic, they use MySQL (yes, really; look it up).

MySQLs time has come and gone

just repeating random shit doesn't make it true, even if you might think it does. but what the fuck do you know, you think Access is a database.

Re:Not Oracle, Microsoft..

[drinkypoo]

The problem is that they'd have an architecture that the Operating System which bears their name ("Microsoft Windows") wouldn't run on, and that could probably never run Windows well. They either have to abandon it completely (yeah right) or come up with some kind of emulation system that will run x86 apps on SPARC at an acceptable speed. "Yeah, right" was what I Was thinking, too.

Re:Not Oracle, Microsoft..

[BitZtream]

You know most of what you view on slashdot comes from static files, right? That are generated regularly from the database, and you don't hit the database on every page view or comment view like you seem to think? This has been discussed several times in slashdots history. Heard of memcache? Guess who uses it to avoid rerunning queries? Slashdot? Wikipedia?

You know slashdot has an incredibly small number of writes compared to the number of reads, right?

Google use a modified version of MySQL for some small internal projects, go look it up. Google uses Big Table, their OWN database for anything that you've ever accessed. Go look it up.

You are correct though, spewing random shit doesn't make it true, so you should probably stop.

You should also probably read my posts about access without your head up your ass and a little reading comprehension skill to see that I've been very clear to point out Access is about middle managers being able to write in VBA to make data management apps, not about the data itself, and that if you want access to use a real database, you link it to a server, not Jet.

Learn to read, twit.

Re:Not Oracle, Microsoft..

[badkarmadayaccount]

.NET mean anything to you?

uh oh

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything except the DB that Oracle has touched in the past has turned into a stinking pile of crap.

Start saving...

[dudeeh]

Sun has some amazing technologies and I would really hate to see it be sold. However, since that seems to be the way Sun wants to go, I can't make up my mind who would be best suited to take it over.

I wasn't too crazy about IBM's bid, because the large overlap would probably deprecate some Sun technology.

Oracle is another matter, mysql could indeed be a nice "lightweight" addition to their database portfolio and the other technologies probably would not get wasted. However, what scares me about Oracle products is the IMMENSE pricetag. If they buy out Sun, how long till they start charging exorbitant fees for their products?

Cisco could be a good option, though I am unsure how well they would fare with these technologies. It would be kind of a new market on many fronts for them, not sure if/how they could handle it.

I doubt Dell will buy them, and that leaves us with... what?
Red Hat? In some parallel reality, possibly, in this one, na.
Microsoft, for the sake of Sun's kickass technology, let's hope not. ...

So here's me hoping Sun doesn't get bought out at all and that they clean up their marketing act a bit.

Re:Start saving...

[badkarmadayaccount]

I think you skipped someone. Someone from the ye olden giants. They were notorious with their printers. The true committers of the Alphacide.
*shuder*
I need a hug right now.
*sob*

PostgreSQL

[Civil_Disobedient]

PostgreSQL is still a *huge* player (in fact, they're pretty-much the only open-source, fully-transactional DB available).

Also, Access isn't MS's DB offering... MS SQLServer is the real player. Access is as much a database as a go-cart is a race car (which is to say, kinda-sorta, but not really).

Re:PostgreSQL

[Anonymous Coward]

pretty-much the only open-source, fully-transactional DB available).

besides Ingres right?

      http://ingres.com/

Postgres is more popular in the open source application ecosystem though.

Re:PostgreSQL

[turing_m]

Access is as much a database as a go-cart is a race car (which is to say, kinda-sorta, but not really).

Access is more like a race car body (Forms and Reports generation) that comes with a free go-cart engine (Jet) that you can drop in if you don't know any better. As a RAD tool Access is still better than equivalent FOSS offerings, unfortunately. The gap is closing.

Re:PostgreSQL

[subreality]

PostgreSQL is still a *huge* player (in fact, they're pretty-much the only open-source, fully-transactional DB available).

I love PostgreSQL, but I have to acknowledge:

Firebird
H2
Ingres (ancestor of Postgres)
SQLite

None of these are Oracle-killers, but they are all robust, open-source SQL RDBMSs in their own right.

SAP AG should buy Sun Microsystems

[nofactor]

I prefer an independent Sun Microsystems, they have an excellent track record as innovators. But if it can't succeed on its own, my suggestion is that SAP AG should buy Sun.

What If Oracle Bought Sun Microsystems?

[TheCybernator]

We will have Suracle!!

and think about it. What if Google buys Sun and get a Soogle :) So Ogle.

Re:What If Oracle Bought Sun Microsystems?

[Kugrian]

What if Google buys Sun and get a Soogle :) So Ogle.

Sun has nothing Google wants.

OS: Android > Solaris
Code: Python > Java
Office: Google Apps > Staroffice
Database: BigTable+GFS > MYSQL

The virtualization software (VirtualBox) might be nice, but all the Google stuff I've seen ported has used Wine.

Re:What If Oracle Bought Sun Microsystems?

[Haley's Comet]

You're daft. it wouldn't be Soogle, it would be Gun!

personally i think Sun is done for

[alen]

i think their support is crap. every time i call for netbackup support it takes them a week to get back to me. place i work for was scammed into buying netbackup from Sun instead of Veritas years ago.

i'm trying to get the latest media for netbackup and it's insane trying to register just to download it.

we looked at the SL500 a few months ago and it was overpriced. everything Sun sells seems overpriced compared to HP, including the servers.

Re:personally i think Sun is done for

[gentry]

I, somewhat sadly, have to agree with this. Sun support used to be, up until a few years ago, some of the best around. First is was the cutting of the real music from on hold, replacing it with adverts. Then then shipped silver and gold support out to Eastern Europe. At that point a call that previously took a hour or two to resolve suddenly became several hours, if it was ever resolved.
Solaris is really not what it should be by now. Patching is still an absolute pain. Command line tools are either archaic or not at all UNIXy (zonecfg, svcs, svcadm etc.). ZFS is largely worthless to the Enterprise space: VM & FS in one so not worth using on hardware RAID platforms and SANS. Zones are handy in dev, and on light installations but of no used in large deployments (Oracle in a zone? No chance). The thing is, SMEs don't generally use Solaris and it's not going to make inroads into that space at this late stage. Linux has done that already if they want UN*X(alike).
DTrace is nifty, I'm sure, but has a heck of a learning curve and so far I've not met anyone who's used it in earnest.
So, the features that 10 offers to the Enterprise market are what 8 and 9 have - good performance and reliability. But Linux, largely thanks to RHEL 5.x, can do that too now and on cheaper hardware.
It's all a great shame. I really enjoyed working with Solaris. It was an easy buy-in for managers and worked beautifully on Sun's hardware. But since Sun turned into a buzz-word crazed marketing machine (what ever happened to xVM Server..?) under Schwartz it's become a shadow of it's former self.
A great, great shame.

Re:personally i think Sun is done for

[El_Oscuro]

Have you ever actually dealt with Symantec^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Veritas support? A week is good. I once had a problem that persisted for 6 months that ultimately proved to be caused by the workaround they provided for another problem. And you need their support a lot, as Netbackup is a total POS.

After several years of trying, I finally convinced my Manager to get Tivoli instead of the latest version of Netbackup, and we have never looked back. In the 3 years we have had Tivoli, we have had less problems than we would typically have with Netbackup in a month. Plus, it is a lot cheaper.

Re:personally i think Sun is done for

[Anonymous Coward]

What planet are you from?

Nothing in HP's lineup compares to Sun's lineup.. Price higher, quality lower, reliability lower.

That's just on the x86 lineup.

Their supposed high-end UNIX (HP-UX) lineup is a joke. Too bad that operating system was left in the 80s, 90s if being extremeley gracious.

What if ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Sun simply goes bankrupt? Sparc is under the GPL, all key software is OpenSource so things will live on. No problem.

Sun's software assets are worthless

[Anonymous Coward]

If ZFS, MySQL, Java, and DTrace are such great assets then why is Sun sucking? Sun's only real value is their hardware. ZFS and DTrace enhance the capability of their hardware, but those other software packages haven't helped them at all.

They haven't ever been able to make any money off of Java, even though it is widely used. MySQL's feature set is outclassed by just about every other 'enterprise' database, if you even consider MySQL an 'enterprise' database. I don't even understand the point of MySQL. Postgres is open-source, more robust, has more features, and is much easier to develop for too. If you don't need an 'enterprise' database, there are better lite-weight options like SQlite. Why would you use MySQL?

Re:Sun's software assets are worthless

[rackserverdeals]

They haven't ever been able to make any money off of Java, even though it is widely used

In one of Jonathan Schwartz blog posts he said they make something like $275 million a year just from licensing Java. The way it's phrased doesn't seem to include any of their other Java software such as the Enterprise Server stack.

Sun's revenue is close to $14 Billion a year. To compare, RedHat is only $164 Million, Novel is $214 mil, Oracle is $5.5 billion, IBM is $127 Billion.

They're selling stuff and bringing in a decent chunk of change. The problem they have is in making a profit. There's a huge potential there.

Re:Sun's software assets are worthless

[HAWAT.THUFIR]

Sun's revenue is close to $14 Billion a year. To compare, RedHat is only $164 Million, Novel is $214 mil, Oracle is $5.5 billion, IBM is $127 Billion.

They're selling stuff and bringing in a decent chunk of change. The problem they have is in making a profit. There's a huge potential there.

If there revenue is that great, then they just need to reduce costs to get to profitability. However, those numbers just don't make sense.

Re:Sun's software assets are worthless

[rackserverdeals]

If there revenue is that great, then they just need to reduce costs to get to profitability. However, those numbers just don't make sense.

Reducing costs isn't always easy and revenues are likely to decline in this economy. They've been reducing workforce but that doesn't show immediate benefits because of severance packages and they didn't cut enough soon enough.

Don't know what doesn't make sense. Unless you're implying that the SEC is allowing them to commit fraud. While the SEC doesn't have a stellar record because of Madoff, I doubt that's the case here.

How about Sun?

[morgauxo]

How many employees does Sun have? If there is anywhere near enough and if they want to have jobs in a year they better get together and buy it themselves. Java hasn't taken over the world like it was meant to. The position it could have held unfortunately is slowly being eroded away by .NET on the application end and things like Flash/Air on the web side. MySQL is everywhere but proprietary ownership is not working well for it and it will go off on it's own opensource way soon. Actually, if it can somehow manage to be relevant in the long-term it would not be surprising to see Java do the same. Solaris... what's the point today?? Really!! Who needs a proprietary Unix distro and for what? Perhaps for some proud geek to wear as a badge.. see, it's not Linux.. I'm a non-conformist Whoever buys Sun is going to do it as a shortcut to make their competition go away. Competition that was going to go away albeit much slower anyway. They will be sliced and diced right from the start and any remaining pieces will be left to rot like AOL's purchase of Netscape. If they want long term employment Sun's employees had better buy it out and then go straight into a creative binge to find a new direction.

Re:How about Sun?

[HAWAT.THUFIR]

Java hasn't taken over the world like it was meant to. The position it could have held unfortunately is slowly being eroded away by .NET on the application end and things like Flash/Air on the web side.

Which is a shame. There's still hope for Java, but not directly, I think. The hope is for things like JRuby, JPython, etc. Maybe it's time to let Java die, as in start freezing it and re-allocate resources elsewhere -- anywhere but .NET, of course.

I think this is very likely

[jernejk]

I work at an Oracle shop and I must say this would make sense from Oracle's point of view. They would probably kill most of the free stuff (bye bye MySql, Glassfish,...), but would probably keep seling hardware (remember, oracle just got into hardware business!) and possibly solaris. As for Java... I don't know. I work with Jdeveloper - it's good but bloated, and most important, not open sourced (it's free, but not open sourced). I have no idea what happens if ANY other company than SUN owns Java...?

Re:RedHat should make the purchase

[GNUbuntu]

I don't know if RedHat has the capital,

They don't. They only have about 1.7 billion in assets and less than 700 million in cash. They'd have to get some pretty hefty financing to buy Sun and I doubt anyone is going to loan them money that would amount to 12-15 times their total revenue last year.

Long thought IBM or Oracle would Buy Sun

[olddotter]

I have long thought that IBM or Oracle would buy Sun to control Java. Yes there are innovations that come out of Sun, but hold long can Sparc compete with Intel/AMD and Solaris compete with Linux. Sun just doesn't have the resources to win both of those battles. Java is their trump card, and they don't know how to monetize it. Unless they figure out how to profit off of Java, I see them dieing a slow death.

Re:Long thought IBM or Oracle would Buy Sun

[Amiga Trombone]

Yes there are innovations that come out of Sun, but hold long can Sparc compete with Intel/AMD and Solaris compete with Linux.

Considering Sun just lost their lead chip designer to Microsoft, I'd say Sparc, if not Sun itself, has had the last nail driven into it's coffin already.

Sun + Oracle = Yay

[adpe]

Let me tell you a story. I work in a professional environment in a 10k+ Person Organization. We decided we want to implement Identity Management. We chose the (Open Source) Sun Identity Manager, one of their enterprise products, based on J2EE.

The documentation is horrible, but that's not what it's about. Our development machines run on a JBoss AS with a Mysql Repository. The performance is horrible, and I mean it. It's beyond bad, MySql gobbles up the whole server. It takes 95% CPU time and 2 gb ram for our (rather complex) queries.

On our staging machine (running Oracle as a repository), the same tasks take 10% CPU and we hardly notice it happening.

Needles to say, SUN thought it might be a good idea (for political reason obv) to include Mysql in their documentation as "supported", although no sane person would actually use it.

I kinda forgot what my post has to do with this story. I just read "Oracle + Sun" and it clicked. I'm conditioned to think it's a perfect combination.

Re:And... not going to happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I wasn't so lazy and logged in - I would give you a -5 Troll - This is a great move for their database market - just look at the graph: http://www.mysql.com/why-mysql/marketshare/ That would give them OVER 50% of the market share! If their current for profit market share of 23% is worth a market cap of $95B, than paying a little measly $8B for that other 29% seems pretty braindead. Then just turn on the salesforce guys...

Say good by to their OSS initiatives

[nurb432]

They will either close or shut down projects like Openoffice, NetBeans, Java, Open Solaris, Open Sparc. ( and other smaller projects )

It would be a sad day.

Better download what source you can and fork the projects before it all becomes extinct.

Sun playing solo, anyone?

[Kensai7]

What about Sun not being bought by anyone and Jonathan Schwartz keeping his pony tail?

Seriously guys, the profits have fallen but this has been the case even since the previous administration (McNealy). The company still holds very well in its core solution, ie Java. I never though of a 5-billion-dollar company as a poor one. There are bigger fishes in the pond, indeed, Sun will just have to avoid them.

Oh yea, Oracle would die to have MySQL

[BitZtream]

...

What crack head thinks this shit up? Anyone who thinks this should not be allowed to touch a database. Ever.

Re:RedHat should make the purchase

[BitZtream]

Hahahaha

No, Redhat does not have the capital to buy Sun. They don't even have the capital to take Sun out on a respectable date and they probably never will.

Its kind of sad that you don't realize how much larger Sun is than Redhat. Redhat really isn't that impressive. It may be impressive to the Linux community, but not to the real world. The rest of the world is still waiting for their customers to realize that they have nothing of value to sell. Everything they have of value is built on something someone else gives away, and if you truely believe in OSS then you can't possibly believe Redhat has a chance since anything they produce and sell, someone else can sell as well. Buying service contracts from them is pretty stupid as you can accomplish the same thing on the Internet for no charge with Google and the various support forums out there. If you have a bug you need fixed, there are plenty of other places to buy a short term developer to fix it, and since the information is all public, Redhat only has experience to help it out, which is good, but there are plenty of other people who have experience as well and many times you can find someone with that experience to make you a patch for free. Remember, thats one of the advantages of OSS right?

Just because the OSS hippies don't think Sun has anything of value doesn't make it actually true. Nor does it give Redhat anything of value.

Re:And... not going to happen.

[BitZtream]

When your share of the market is the 23% that doesn't buy anything, then your share of the market doesn't matter. Sorry, no one buys FOSS because of market share, they buy it because people are stupid and like buzz words. People who use FREE software generally are the people who don't PAY for software, so its of little value to anyone.

I really wish you people could it into your thick heads, companies don't want something thats free, they want something they can sell.

That comparison chart is really wrong

[tlambert]

That comparison chart is really wrong; I think it was done by someone who either never actually used DTrace, didn't know how DTrace works, or just hasn't used it well enough to be familiar with it.

DTrace instruments by placing an INT 3 (on other platforms, it's an illegal instruction) at the probe point and remembering where that was done. The trap handler then has a code path that knows about this, and shunts it over to DTrace for a probe lookup.

Pretty clearly, whoever wrote that chart has only used fbt (Function Boundary Tracing), and is not familiar with the fact that the trace points can pretty much be put at any instruction location where the instrumentation would not involve reentering the trap handler. This means any instruction, and it's done *without* using break points.

I really don't have time to fix this for them (and I doubt I'd get edit rights if it started making DTrace look relatively better anyway), but someone involved in the project should actually take a real look at the software they are trying to compete with before they so casually (and incorrectly) dismiss it.

-- Terry

Re:That comparison chart is really wrong

[Cyberax]

I'll ask authors to correct this. BTW, SystemTap also works this way.

But there _are_ valid points in this table. For example, SystemTap probe language is much richer and LTTng is faster than DTrace (and SystemTap, though it's likely to change).

Re:That comparison chart is really wrong

[Haley's Comet]

placing an INT 3 (on other platforms, it's an illegal instruction)

WTF? You aren't serious are you? M$ debug used that, IIRC (x86 not SPARC). I am fairly certain that the http://www.freedos.org/ version uses it too. Hardware breakpoints are slick, but weren't available when DOS was stol... written. Yes, I void warranties and edit binaries.

Re:And... not going to happen.

[BitZtream]

MySQL would slowly just get plowed under and absorbed.

Actually, I would assume part of the deal would be that MySQL is left out. Its of no use to them. There are better OSS databases out there to be had at this point, even Sun thinks so.

RHT vs. JAVA

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if RedHat has the capital, but if they could swing a deal like that by buying out Sun, they are far better in a position to reap from everything offered. From the OS to the language, that would boost RedHat's abilities in the market place.

RH has 2,00 employees, Sun as 33,000. RH had US$ 400M in revenue, Sun had $US 13B.

RH has a market cap of about $3.6B, Sun is at about $5B. Sun also has about $3B of cash in the bank.

Not quite sure what logic the stock market is working on that.

MyOracle?

[ClosedSource]

I don't see what MySQL provides to Oracle. How long would it take Oracle to create a defeatured version of their database product that has about the same features as MySQL. It's not as if MySQL has some great database secrets that Oracle doesn't already know about.

Re:MyOracle?

[El_Oscuro]

They already have one. It's called Oracle Express Edition., so I don't think MySQL is too important to them, other than removing a competitor.

What would be interesting is the hardware and OS angle. When you control the hardware and O/S, it becomes a lot easier to support (ask Apple), and offers customers a single vendor to call when something breaks.

Re:MyOracle?

[ClosedSource]

When you say "hardware and O/S" do you mean SPARC and Solaris? Aren't both of these on the decline?

Why waste your time with such small offerings

[SnarfQuest]

Why waste your time buying these small offerings, when you can go right to the top. If you buy SCO, you own every single byte of code ever written to run under any unix-like operating system.

If the courts weren't so slow, SCO would be the largest company in the world. But you can get in on the ground floor quite cheaply right now. But wait. If you buy right now, you also get an additional Darrel Mcbride with your order.

Experience Says Yes

[deanston]

Oracle + Sun would be the natural alternative to SQL Server + Windows. Many shops that I worked for used to be Oracle + Unix gradually shifted to MSFT over the last 10 years due to cost and staffing. Streamline the server support contracts and cost would make sense to compete with Microsoft. MySQL can be to Oracle like Sybase to DB2 at IBM, and there's still Postgres and other open source DBs. A play by Oracle might actually bring IBM back to the bidding war and be good for Sun. Right now Sun does not have enough revenue stream that will make enough money to bail itself out. Sun wasted all its energy fighting MS, and failed to see that their real enemy was Intel + Dell.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

So, would that be a...

[Anonymous Coward]

lynch mod?

Redhat buying Sun...

[Anonymous Coward]

... sounds like (Caldera buying SCO)^2

Download MySQL now

[Anonymous Coward]

If you thought Sun was bad for MySQL (and they were quite bad for a few months), Oracle would be horrible (and there wouldn't be any second thoughts either). They would kill it like Microsoft killed Foxpro. Oh sure, you could still get it, but it would be useless. Able to access a million rows a second with a single core P4 at 1GHz now? In the future you will only be able to access 20000 rows per second using multiple multi-core overclocked Nehalem processors. And that would be after tweeking the database a lot and making sure absolutely no other application (not even daemons) are running! Download the latest version (source) of MySQL 5.0 now! Who knows how bad it will be after Oracle ruins it.

Why did they change their stock symbol to JAVA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone care to tell me why they changed their stock symbol from SUNW to JAVA? How's that even remotely relevant to any business strategy?

Re:Why did they change their stock symbol to JAVA?

[BitZtream]

The same reason we have Windows 2000, XP and Vista instead of Windows 5, 5.1 and 6, marketing. Perhaps it wasn't the best marketing plan, but it was a marketing plan. Had java taken over the world, it probably would have been seen as a good one.

On that same note, Windows 7 really should be 6.1

Noooooo, is right.

[my_left_nut]

Oracle buying Sun, might be good for Sun, but it would suck for everyone else. Recently, we've had dealings with Oracle for various things, and their unbelievably arrogant sales team literally talked and priced themselves out of a sale. They said they'd be able to beat SAP (for SFA, financials, etc) and ended up coming in at almost twice the price. And once you get on one of their pre-sales lists the SE's never stop bugging you. Way too aggressive. If they get to distribute the Sun JDK, in a year you'd have to give them your life story in order to download it, with a load of nagging sales calls following your download. So, like the tag says "noooooooo...".

DOOM

[erexx23]

A black hole would open up and swallow the universe, only to barf it all back out in Java and HTML.

You mean they should fail?

[Ilgaz]

Guys, Oracle has become World's second biggest commercial software company with -being- only a software and support company. The number 1 is Microsoft and if you exclude the great doing Input devices/Game consoles business, they are only a software/services company too. I see game console as specialised hardware to run their software anyway.

Oracle buying Sun would be more like 3dfx buying ST Microelectronics and going with their own cards which we have seen what happened later.

Just think about their relations with Microsoft when they push Oracle stuff on Solaris/Sun hardware to customers. MS can even say "Their software works so-so on Windows since they want to sell Sun hardware" to their customers.

Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

EOM

Screw Oracle

[awshidahak]

Sun should be bought out by SCO. Think of the future it would create!!!

MySQL, ZFS, DTrace, and Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: Which company (other than Sun) currently either incorporates (3), or is moving towards incorporating (1) all of these in their OS?

Q: Which company currently has > $25B in cash and short-term investments on its balance sheet with NO outstanding debt?

Anyone? Is this a fit?

Who's screwing who?

[ActusReus]

The whole point of being a contractor is that "permanent" employees trade a ~25% pay cut for the illusion of job security. As a contractor, you make more money for doing the exact same job... so long as you're willing to keep your skillset competitive, and endure being looked down upon by the legacy-maintenance guys who are too lazy to keep their skillsets competitive.

If a company pays you extra money for 10 years, AND you're not having to look for new gigs, then who exactly is the chump?

Synergy - Bingo!

[ancientt]

I don't disagree with the idea that Sun would not improve Oracle's ability to compete and generate income. I'm still undecided on that point. I don't think it is a lack of synergy though. The idea that "different entities cooperate advantageously for a final outcome" where those entities are Oracle and Sun trying to take a bigger slice of the database server market, however, is reasonable. Oracle is a database software company with great marketing trying to break into a server market. Sun is a server company with lousy marketing that can't seem to make inroads in the corporate database market. If you combine them you could have a company with a strong database and software combination taking over the market for corporate database servers. Whether or not the merge would benefit the companies involved is still a question, but if it does then it will fit the definition of synergy very well.

Plus the media hype would complete my buzzword bingo card, so I'm all for it.

Re:And... not going to happen.

[kv9]

People who use FREE software generally are the people who don't PAY for software, so its of little value to anyone.

it's not free as in beer, you imbecile.

The other side of the coin...

[tjstork]

Contracts that you talk about are really for staff augmentation. But, if you bring in contractors to execute a project, and actually make something, then the result is rather different. Contractors get particularly paranoid about the quality of work - it has to stand up to more scrutiny than an inhouse team would.

The thing is, permanent employees tend to build up a culture inside a bubble. I have a client that's living in the 1980s, and they have ingrained to taking so many shortcuts that they have utterly forgotten what a good program is. Permanent employees can build up a sense of safety and entitlement and will do enough to move the ball a bit but not ever really score.

It's called capitalism

[Anonymous Coward]

*Insert any company name here* has no allegiance but to itself.

Oracle:

[Alex Belits]

Oracle: Computer Associates of the 21st century.
(buying troubled software companies and running them into the ground).

Re:Oracle:

[teknopurge]

IBM: Computer Associates of the 20th-22nd centuries.
(buying troubled software companies and running them into the ground).

Fixed.

The JVM has become the backbone...

[Anonymous Coward]

The JVM has become the backbone of most of the Real World [TM] 's processing.

There, fixed for ya.

And that's because the Java Virtual Machine is an amazing piece of engineering.

Re:The JVM has become the backbone...

[teknopurge]

It's not just the engineering - it's the language design. Jim Gosling did a HELL of a job. He and Jay Miner are perhaps the most innovative thinkers in computing in the past 30 years.

Re:RedHat should make the purchase

[m50d]

RedHat is nowhere near big enough, but since you mention it, what about Novell?

Buyer list

[marco69v]

In 3 days I've counted possibile buyers on posts around the world (after IBM): apple oracle cisco ... Now I'll start a collection with some of my friends and we'll do an OPA over them too...

mysql, sun, and oracle = The Antichrist

[Anonymous Coward]

In terms of MySQL, that battle is already lost: Sun uses a fork of MySQL, so they paid all that money for nothing.

Sun is pathetic, when I started working as a sysadmin I replaced these SunOS guys that thought they were the shit, but all they knew how to do was refer to the binders above their desk or call their "second level support."

In terms of Java, that will probably finally kill off Oracle. The only people who like Java are the Java developers, and that's because they base every program on the Hello World program they wrote in 101 class. Advocating for Java is a sign of incompetence or corruption: either you don't know better, or you're trying to continue bleeding your company to pay you a great salary to produce 10 lines of code per day (and most of that is setup code).

Re:RedHat should make the purchase

[swillden]

Cash isn't the only option. Many acquisitions are done with stock swaps. Still, RedHat probably couldn't swing it.

Put MySQL back into the Open Source World

[Anonymous Coward]

If Oracle does this, they would be less likely to support a competitor to their dreamy overpriced database product. Say goodbye to MySQL.

Re:And... not going to happen.

[BitZtream]

Funny, I've never paid for it, you imbecile.

The parts of MySQL that you pay for are utterly asstastic compared to any of the alternatives that are free or cheaper. The 3 morons that buy the MySQL don't make up that 23% number, thats the total penetration of the product after taking into account ALL of the free installations.

If you went by paying installations then you'd end up with a NaN error.

No chance

[hutchike]

Java is open source software. If Oracle likes it that much, it can do a "Red Hat" and simply shadow or fork it with its own dev team. It might do a better job too. Surely that's cheaper than the $7bn or so it would cost to buy Sun with its workforce of 30,000 people. (Oracle's workforce is 86,600 people, so that would add 35% to the headcount!)

Apart from InnoDB, Oracle doesn't really have a history of open source involvement. I just can't see Sun the company being attractive to Oracle (but MySQL, the database sure would be). Just my 2c. I hold put options on JAVA shares and am waiting to cash them in the next month or so.