[etherael]

Of that I have no doubt, but what I originally thought they would do; use their business resources mixed with Sun's engineering resources, does not appear to be their plan at all. They seem to be losing all of the best Sun engineering talent and do not seem at all concerned about about that fact.

That leads me not to conclude they are failing at what I originally thought they were doing, but succeeding at something else and I am curious as to what that is.

[loewenskind]

Sun had more copyrights than anyone except IBM. I suspect that's the reason. And it could have even been a defensive thing. Sun was obviously failing badly. If they didn't buy Sun someone else eventually would and then that company could almost certainly start suing oracle over something.

[lzw]

They bought suns business. They will probably replace engineers and continue projects they like, they will lose engineers focused in products that are cut.

I think part of suns problem was engineering that was going in for engineering sake, not business sake, and oracle is going to lose those engineers.

[bad_user]

I don't know what businesses other people have collaborated with ... but to me the people behind the products I'm using matter a lot, I'm not dealing with faceless entities.

Personally that's precisely why I'm using Postgresql ... I can talk to the core team of developers and get their input whenever I feel like there's a problem with Postgresql. And for a web service we worked on, we even hired a Mysql developer to come and help us (was also on Sun's payroll at the time).

How could I trust a product based on ZFS or how could I trust them to build my products on top of Java or any of their Sun-derived solutions ... when the top talent that worked on those products left?

Not to mention I don't like hypocrites ... before the Sun acquisition they called on Sun to make the JCP more open. Is this an US thing? Can companies fuck with you because it's just business?

Oracle seems to me like a sweat shop. Nothing wrong with that and I'm glad they are making lots of money ... but in my shop you can get fired for suggesting Oracle products, and it's not just me, there's a whole generation of software developers that won't touch their cash cows.

There's a whole generation of developer that have chosen Mysql or Postgres or implemented their own shit, and did not go for Oracle's DB ... that's revenue and opportunities lost for them, and I'm only seeing this trend getting stronger.