Oracle buys Sun; Moon still in Shopping Cart

So I woke up this morning and thought: am I stoned?

Yes, that’s what I thought. I had just read that Oracle and Sun have an agreement to be wedded in holy matri-money to the tune of $7.4 billion…

Sure, it’s the twentieth of April… My neighbors are pretty relaxed about that sort of thing… Maybe, by some passing contact high, I was feelin’ groovy… And it just seems so surreal! I had heard rumors of the deal, but thought they were going nowhere in this economy, and put it out of my spaced-out head.

However, when I read that “the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,” according to Oracle President Safra Catz, I knew that he was stoned. Not me. I mean, that guy must be toking and squinting as he said that. And the reporter was sympathetic enough (or also as high) to leave out the little “chkk.. chkkk…” coughs while Safra held his hits….

Okay, green leafy weeds aside, what does all this mean? Well, my crystal iPhone (you need one, it’s worth selling your soul for) reveals the inner story that “Regarding Java, [Larry] Ellison said it wanted Sun so it could own the building blocks for its middleware. Oracle’s middleware is built on Java and the applications giant said it will continue to invest in the software.” Okay, so it’s all about crushing the competition (IBM) and hearing the lamentations of their accountants. I get that.

But what’s in it for me? Don’t look at me, says my crystal iPhone. Great. Just when I needed either a prophesying gadget or a soul — I’m out both!

As a PHP/MySQL developer, I was at first glad when Sun bought MySQL back in January of Aught-Eight. My little database had all grown up! But then Sun pinched out MySQL 5 with way too many bugs, pissing off one of the founders of MySQL, who left shortly after. And Oracle has no need for Sun software, except for Java, which is the platform for Oracle middleware.

All right, what happens to MySQL now? As a Drupal developer, while MySQL is the preferred solution, and is the most popular free database in the world, there is support for PostGRESQL within Drupal, but it’s not nearly as mature or even as widely understood as using MySQL.

Of course, if I can get my hands on a Wiimote with MotionPlus, then all my MySQL-related problems (as well as all that smokey haze) will be waved away!