Future of MySQL & Java

"Oracle has taken over Sun Microsystems."

Oracle Corporation has agreed to buy California-headquatered Sun Microsystems in a $7.4 billion ($9.50 per share) deal. The question that comes in our mind is what would happen to MySQL, which sun has recently acquired for a whopping US$ 1 billion? Many had feared Oracle may kill MySQL-but the lure of reaching out to enterprise customers through Sun's sales team seemed to offset the threats. Now, we are talking about the biggest proprietary database firm acquiring the fastest growing open source database project- that's tricky.

Experts got mixed views. Some believe that MySQL is now too strong to be killed, and hence Oracle would be smart enough to use it and expand its base in new markets, while others believe it might try to slow down MySQL's growth so that is does not end up competing with Oracle's own database.

What about OpenOffice.org? Will Oracle use it to create problems for Microsoft on MS Office turf? After all, Larrry Ellison, Oracle's big boss, has been quite open about his anti-Microsoft sentiments, and this could be a good chance for him. Plus, OpenOffice.org also powers the Symphony project of another of Oracle's competitors-IBM. How closely will the two teams work, I wonder.

Then there's Java too, which was also open sourced by sun. Ellison is beaming with pride abou this acquisition. His famous quote about Java still it all, "...the most important software Oracle has even acquired". So, there's nothing to worry about Java.

In a nutshell- Java's future is certain. MySQL and OpenOffice.org is anyone's guess.