Disclaimer: These are my personal opinion and is not representative of where I work
The rumors and news are spreading like fire, and there are lots of arguments on both sides. They talk about cloud strategies, hardware, existing customers, etc.
But what about Java?
First, I have to say my post here might be biased. I'm not exactly in favor of this buy over. I work in a small company which is a Sun partner, which means I do have quite a bit to lose in this buy over.
Anyway, about Java.
There are many companies with a lot of stakes in Java. There is IBM (the buyer), HP, Oracle, for the players that I can think of offhand. I'm sure I missed out many others, but I have limited exposure.
Java is open. It is run by JCR. Many would have argued. But Java is still very much associated with Sun, who is seen as a steward of Java. A protector. The hero against Microsoft and .NET (though, I do find .NET and C# to be quite appealing and nicely designed).
Sun own the trademark to Java afaik. One has to wonder what happen when IBM buys Sun.
Sun is a strong innovator. Sadly, they did not manage to capitalize on them too well. For example, for tools, IBM manage to overpower them with Eclipse back then. BEA WebLogic for Application Server.
Which is not exactly a bad thing I guess. Java is truly open. It is fair game.
Now, what happens if IBM buys over Sun. Will IBM take advantage of this and start steering Java to a direction which is advantagous to themselves? Gain an edge in the speed they push out Java Standards than the others? Will the others be playing catch up with IBM in terms of Java Standards?
These are just speculations of course.
On the other hand, what about the various Sun projects? Regardless if they are open-source or otherwise, they are still very much managed by existing Sun engineers. Glassfish, OpenESB, OpenSSO, MySQL, even OpenDS. I'm not all together familiar with IBM's portfolio, but I would think they have their own offerings of Application Server, SOA architecture, Directory Server, Single Sign On, Identity Management, a
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