Oracle purchase of Sun wins EU approval

In the latest news regarding Sun and Oracle -- which is pretty important to my Java and MySQL life -- Oracle has finally won EU approval for their purchase of Sun, and they are also planning to provide a "Sun Road Map " next week.

In the first piece of news, Oracle has won "unconditional approval" for their purchase of Sun. I'm not sure how this can be called "unconditional", as Oracle has at least made some verbals commitments regarding the future of MySQL.

In the second piece of news, Oracle plans to provide more details about its plans for Sun at an event next Wednesday, January 27, 2010. All I can say about that press conference is that if you're interested in getting free publicity, holding this event on the same day Apple appears ready to announce their tablet doesn't sound like a great idea.

Oracle/Sun deal - opinion

As a Java developer and MySQL database user, Oracle's purchase of Sun freaks me out, at least a little bit. Surely anyone will admit to some uncertainty here, and I personally can't imagine this purchase being good for the future of MySQL as we know it today, but time will tell. I have no idea what Oracle will do with Java, but hopefully we'll learn that next Wednesday.

As a final note, it seems interesting how many companies are willing to compete with their own vendors these days. With their Nexus One, Google is willing to compete with Motorola and other Android partners, and now Oracle appears to be getting into the Sun hardware business, which puts them at odds with Oracle/Windows/Intel vendors. IBM has always competed with vendors in regards to DB2, so I suppose this model can work, but if I had a vote in the matter at Oracle, I think I would have voted against going into the hardware business.