On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 10:42 PM, Bayard Bell <buffer.g.overf...@googlemail.com> wrote: > Martin, > > This is a fundamental misstatement of Oracle's position as a software vendor > prior to acquiring Sun. Oracle faces considerable competition from sources > such as MS SQL Server and DB2. It has nothing like a monopoly over the RDBMS > market. To the extent that it does have a position as a leader, it attracts > a great deal of attention from competition and anti-trust authorities in > both the US and EU, where you likely are aware that it had to make numerous > representations that it would not use MySQL via the Sun acquisitions to > engage in anti-competitive behaviour and that it was committed to supporting > further development of MySQL under GPL. Their competitive position is not at > all recognisable from your description. > > Moreover, Oracle is a company run by people with backgrounds in finance, a > lot of concern for how they are viewed by the capital markets, and a lot of > experience in acquiring companies (just look at the list on their Wikipedia > entry). These folks aren't making leveraged buyouts in the private equity > style of a few years ago, buying companies, saddling them with debt, and > gutting their assets. There's no evidence to support the notion that they > would spend 7.4bn USD on Sun just to dump assets that they had identified as > "crown jewels" in selling the due diligence they did on the deal, > particularly when this was a 47% premium on Sun's stock price at the time > the offer was tendered and a bit more than IBM was said to table. Nor would > it make any sense for them to do so after having their most senior > executives show up to talk up the closing of the acquisition by naming SPARC > and Solaris as growth areas for the acquired business that were expected to > enjoy considerable expansions in headcount. If they said this after > completing the deal but by that time fundamentally didn't understand what > they acquired or misrepresented their plans for it, they would be pilloried > by precisely those constituencies they most closely court in running in > their company. They might even end up with a shareholder lawsuit for > material misrepresentations about the merger or failure to conduct due > diligence. Which is to say: it is deeply naive for you to talk about "how > deciders decide" when jumping over very substantial financial and legal > considerations and contradicting statements on public record. To the extent > that Oracle is precisely the kind of calculating corporation you say they > are, they are extremely unlikely to arrive at the conclusions or use the > reasoning you suggest, unless you mean to say that they are either > substantively incompetent and/or malfeasant. > > Whatever your concerns, introducing these kinds of accusatory remarks into > the discussion is fundamentally counterproductive and leads people to worry > about problems they don't have rather than those that they do. By any > reasonable lights, the fundamental problem here isn't that Oracle corporate > management harbour some nefarious agenda for their new acquisition, which > they are carrying forward with utter duplicity, but that they fail to > realise that both the community and more so segments of the customer base > need further and firmer assurances than those already on record. Why not > rather put on a wider view while we're waiting and show balanced, strategic > rather than panicked thinking going into those exchanges? > > The rumours of Solaris's death have been repeatedly greatly exaggerated. I > don't see why the current bout with OpenSolaris would be any different. If > it does end tragically, the scene currently being dressed bears an > unfortunate resemblance to the end of Romeo and Juliet, wherein the first of > two suicides is prematurely occasioned by mistaking the artificially > comatose beloved for dead. > > Cheers, > Bayard
I *hope* with all my belief, that you are just right. TIME will show. %mab _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
