Comment by SwellJoe

7 years ago

That seems far-fetched, to me. Oracle is very focused on being evil and making a lot of money. IBM is ambivalent about being evil.

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SwellJoe

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cookiecaper  7 years ago

The old saying, and who knows whether or not it's true, is that this was basically the deciding factor in Sun deciding to sell out to Oracle v. IBM.

Supposedly both companies had bids out on Sun, with Sun's leadership believing Oracle's tighter business operations would result in fewer layoffs and ultimately less harm to the staff then at Sun. If true, that seems like it mostly turned out to be extremely naive, since Oracle immediately locked down whatever they thought they could sell and cut off everything else.

To be honest the only way Red Hat selling out would've been more disheartening would've been if it was Oracle making the rounds again. I think I'd be happier about an MS acquisition than IBM. Weird, sad stuff.

  • repolfx  7 years ago

    Was it naive? Seems Oracle boosted investment in Java after the acquisition, at least. The stuff they cut were all dead projects walking anyway, eventually those projects were going to go no matter what Sun's fate was.

  • sterlind  7 years ago

    Aww.. I would have loved MS buying them. That'd actually make a ton of sense, and we would probably give them autonomy, like we've done for LinkedIn and GitHub.