Good news for SUN and Oracle, bad for MySQL/Java

Oracle bought SUN. Good news for SUN obviously. Larry Ellison’s claims that “Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – …” is not true. IBM is one company that demonstrated that capability. For Oracle/Sun combined company, the way Ellison meant it, i.e., “oracle software” to disk, is today still wishful thinking but is achievable.

Casualties? Java and MySQL for sure, and perhaps SUN’s hardware business. As TheRegister point out, the future of Sun’s hardware business is still in doubt. However, Ellison’s claim of “applications to disk” suggests that it is not throwing out the hardware business. Still, there is no mention of SPARC processors.

Java will take a hit. The Java Community Process is still too SUN heavy. Compared to the coming Oracle heavy future, the SUN heavy days will be pale by comparison. The setback will be temporary as Java is big enough to stands on its own. The worry is there is going to be a fracture between two incompatible versions if things goes really bad.

For MySQL, it could be the worst possible outcome. Remember Oracle purchase of InnoBase was seen as an attack on MySQL? MySQL can retreat into a “proprietary”-only version. The GPL-ed version of MySQL could see its biggest contributor vanish and whether the community can pick it up is questionable.

The silver lining for MySQL is I am wrong and that Oracle’s stand on MySQL had changed since the InnoBase attack. This means positioning MySQL for those who, for whatever reasons,  don’t want to pay for Oracle database, BUT provide a migraiont path to Oracle database should they change their mind.