Re: Oracle to buy Sun

On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 15:24 +0200, Gabriele Bartolini wrote:

> what's going to happen now?
> http://www.sun.com/third-party/global/oracle/
>
> I am still in the process of understanding the impact of this on a
> wider scale. I would love to collect some ideas that can be presented
> during community talks, as "How is Oracle acquisition of Sun going to
> influence PostgreSQL" is a question that often and inevitably will be
> asked - I presume. I would love to get a list of PROS/CONS of this
> agreement as far as PostgreSQL is concerned, both from a technical point
> of view and a marketing point of view, so I believe your ideas are more
> than welcome!

It certainly explains why Sun bought MySQL in the first place: leverage
to force IBM or Oracle to purchase them. The high price tag for MySQL
seems worth it now, as a strategic investment.

I would think that Oracle will invest money in keeping MySQL "dumb",
e.g. Drizzle. Roll back the features that don't work and smooth the
upgrade path to Oracle for those that need it.

My finger-in-the-air forecast would be that Oracle will spit back out a
much reduced Sun in 1-2 years, sans MySQL.

Anyway, not sure it effects things too much for us.

--
Simon Riggs www.2ndQuadrant.com
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support