@Anonymous: Aliens from Mars
Anonymous Coward suggests, "So, to now look at whatever Oracle is releasing publically and trying to glean some sort of factual basis out of it is simply a waste of time."
Perhaps, but that is the only option available.
Anonymous Coward suggests, "You might as well be saying aliens from Mars are going to take over Sun's hardware division, and it would have as much credence."
I have to say, that has to be the funniest line I have read in a long time!
Anonymous Coward suggests, "I contacted senior management at the company myself... They've sold the company out... over their customers. Deal with it."
This is all about business. When Cisco purchased Grand Junction Networks, Kalpana, and Crescendo Communications - people were not suggesting that it was do do something bad to those customers. Cisco was buying technology & a customer base - those technologies would never have been marketed any better by their individual companies.
SUN has had a severe marketing problem since the dot-com crash. Sun tried to analyze it by sending questioners to their customer base and trying to identify which brand was the strongest. Sun publically acknowledged it, trying to re-brand themselves as JAVA instead of SUNW on the stock market as well as re-branding all their products with the Java trademark.
To suggest that Sun had done this to do something bad to their customers is not reasonable. This could be a very good day for Sun customers. Since Oracle has such a large dependency on Sun Solaris operating systems for their profits - they seem like the best possible consumer of the company, with very little overlap.
I can't say that I am very happy with seeing another company in the market getting consolidated, I do prefer an marketplace with more options. Since Oracle was not designing hardware and Sun was providing software that Oracle did not design, this seems like a VERY good fit - regardless of the consolidation. The market did not lose another hardware designer - this is a good thing.
