Oracle Updates Sun Merger FAQ

Oracle has updated their page on Oracle and Sun and it now includes a PDF entitled "Oracle and Sun Overview and FAQ".

For the first time, it contains some brief answers to some of the hottest JEE community questions around. I copied the relevant sections from the statement in the following. Refer to the PDF for the comple FAQ. I highlighted some interesting parts in italic and commented on the sections. Disclaimer: I know nothing about the Deal at the moment! This are my personal thoughts. Like them, or not!

What are Oracle’s plans for the GlassFish Enterprise (Java EE) Server after the transaction closes?
Oracle plans to continue evolving GlassFish Enterprise Server, delivering it as the open source reference implementation (RI) of the Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) specifications, and actively supporting the large GlassFish community. Additionally, Oracle plans to invest in aligning common infrastructure components and innovations from Oracle WebLogic Server and GlassFish Enterprise Server to benefit both Oracle WebLogic Server and GlassFish Enterprise Server customers.

To me, this sounds like a commitment to the actual JCP process. As I have written earlier in my "Is Oracle good for Java?" posting, I believe, that the JCP needs a new setup after the merger. If this is done, I could imagine that GF will exist and grow. What I am still not shure about is the support offering around GF. Does it make sense, to fully support two application servers?

What are Oracle’s plans for NetBeans?
Oracle has a strong track record of demonstrating commitment to choice for Java developers. As such, NetBeans is expected to provide an additional open source option and complement to the two free tools Oracle already offers for enterprise Java development: Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. While Oracle JDeveloper remains Oracle’s strategic development tool for the broad portfolio of Oracle Fusion Middleware products and for Oracle’s next generation of enterprise applications, developers will be able to use whichever free tool they are most comfortable with for pure Java and Java EE development: JDeveloper, Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, or NetBeans.

To be honest. I liked NetBeans, years ago. And I never liked JDeveloper. And this probably will never change ;) As a eclipse developer I stands in second row behind the JDev users. This will happen to NetBeans users, too. Know what? Does not feel too bad. I expect Oracle to hand NetBeans over to the community and not investing into the core plattform. They will deliver integration points up to the OEPE level. But that will be all.

What are Oracle’s plans for MySQL?
Oracle plans to spend more money developing MySQL than Sun does now. Oracle expects to continue to develop and provide the open source MySQL database after the transaction closes. Oracle plans to add MySQL to Oracle’s existing suite of database products, which already includes Berkeley DB, an open source database. Oracle also currently offers InnoDB, an open source transactional storage engine and the most important and popular transaction engine under MySQL. Oracle already distributes MySQL as part of our Enterprise Linux offering.

I am pretty unshure about MySQL at the moment. Does it really matter in the enterprise? It never hit my road at customers. Anyway, it could be a smart solution for some Exadata variants for small customers. And it has a great distribution among many non commercial and open source products. It is a strong brand and could work for Oracle as it is. I am not affraid about it's future at all.

How does Oracle support open source?
Oracle has long been committed to developing, supporting, and promoting open source. Oracle has been, and continues to be, committed to offering choice, flexibility, and a lower cost of computing for end users. Oracle has invested significant resources in developing, testing, optimizing and supporting open source technologies such as Linux, PHP, Apache, Eclipse, Berkeley DB, and InnoDB. Oracle continues to embrace and offer open source solutions as a viable choice for development and deployment. More information about Oracle’s support of open source can be found at oracle.com/opensource.

They do. As Mike Lehmann states in my recent email interview:

We believe we have the best open standards server implementation on the planet and agressively are standards compliant. We are also strong believers in open source and actively participate in numerous communities supporting open source development.
(Mike Lehmann, Senior Director of Product Management, Fusion Middleware Oracle Weblogic Server and Java Plattform, Oracle)