Image from Sun Microsystems

When a banner like this is published at Sun official website, we know this is not a rumours anymore, but a solid fact. And yes, Oracle acquisition of Sun is agreed at approximately $7.4 billion.

If either of these 2 tech giant names is infamiliar to you, the  this news is most probably not of your interest. As to me, this headline has provoked some immediate thoughts in me, cos there are too many Sun labels in my office laptop, my job has a lot of direct relations to Sun open source stacks.

In general, personally, I’m not in favour of Sun acquisition by Oracle. The first thought when I read Joe’s tweet before having dinner, was “ha??? why Oracle? sh*t!”

To me, based on Oracle’s past acquisition records, Oracle is not really considered a company who has keen willingness to pump in huge monetary support on open source projects. The only relation that I can think of on Oracle acquisition moves, is to wipe out competition. Oracle is still very much a business entity with corporate directions heavily driven by commercial licensing. On a related note, IBM actually shows better commitment in supporting open source projects, and use them as the code-base for value-added commercial products.

Following are some of my initial thoughts on the fate of some products from Sun open source stacks.

Java Programming Language

Luckily, I do believe very much that, Java will still survive very well and grow stronger with Oracle acquisition. Right now, many tools that come with Oracle products are actually developed on Java. Besides, Oracle is also into the business of Java application server with WebLogic. Oracle Fusion Middleware is also very much dependent on Java web technologies. In other words, I don’t think Oracle can live without a strong growth in Java. In fact, Oracle’s presence in steering of Java technologies and directions, will give them a competitive edge, with control and influence over the future specifications.

As highlighted in many press releases and news entries, Java is one of the most important assets gained by Oracle from this acquisition.

MySQL

This is something that I’m getting worried. I don’t think Oracle is interested in the code-base of MySQL, as Oracle itself actually began its presence in the tech world with database business.

If MySQL code-base is not beneficial to the array of Oracle database products, I really doubt how much monetary investment will Oracle be pumping into MySQL development.

Besides, Oracle sales agents couldn’t go out and sell subscriptions of 2 different database products right?

NetBeans

I think NetBeans will very likely be replacing Oracle’s JBuilder, since NetBeans’ adoption is undoutedly at an encouraging stage, and JBuilder is at nothing close to its competitiveness. Oracle can always develop some extensions and plugins to support connectivity of Oracle products, and bundle into NetBeans.

GlassFish

At first thought, GlassFish appears to be conflicting with WebLogic. However, at second thought, I think GlassFish will still continue to play an important role in the development of Java EE. As long as Java EE continues to get R&D support from its new fund master - Oracle, there’s still an undoubtable need for GlassFish to grow as model implementation of the latest Java EE specifications.

But sadly, I think GlassFish might only stay as the model java EE application server implementation for community, instead of unleashing its full potential to have a real big significant presence in enterprises. As long as enterprise presence is concerned, Oracle can choose not to provide commercial support for GlassFish, and focus their bullets on WebLogic. Without commercial support, it’s very hard for GlassFish to make real presence in enterprise deployments.

Solaris OS and Sun SPARC Servers

Solaris and Sun servers, with almost no doubt at all, will get definite love from Oracle, since operating system and hardware business was something not within Oracle’s offering, until this acquisition is realized.

With control over server and operating system technologies, Oracle can also specifically offer some advanced database features which are only available in Solaris on Sun hardware. This is especially important as cloud computing and virtualization is getting as the next big buzz word in the tech world.

Well… let’s keep our fingers crossed, as for now. Shall we believe some nice words mentioned in Oracle’s FAQ (pdf)?