Slow Oracle Merger Leads To Outflow of Sun Projects, Coders 409
An anonymous reader writes "Sun Microsystems might have had a chance if the Oracle merger had gone through quickly, but between the DoJ taking its time and the European Commission, which seems to get off on abusing American firms, just plain dragging its feet, that won't happen now. As Sun twists in the wind, unable to defend itself, and Oracle is unable to do anything until the deal closes, IBM is pretty much tearing Sun to shreds. By the time this deal closes, there won't be much left for Oracle. This is not how a Silicon Valley legend should end."
Why should America be above the law? (Score:2, Insightful)
Kind of like how the USA seems to "get off" on taking down middle eastern fundamentalists and strong men.
FUD article (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupid article - so three coders (JRuby team) quit, and Sun's losing in sales to IBM (which they were doing anyway before the merger).
Not news, is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:European Commission SUCKS (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, it's just that the European Commission is just slightly less beholden to corporations than their counterparts in the US.
As far as I can tell their slowness to sign on to other corporatist things coming from the US has been a pretty good thing.
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not how a Silicon Valley legend should end.
How should they end?
Spectacular bankruptcy like Enron?
Seems like most in silicon valley do a slow fade into oblivion and are eventually acquired for peanuts and never heard from again. 3DO, Transmeta, Borland, Quarterdeck, SGI, etc...
Blaming the Govt. Strawman (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:European Commission SUCKS (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? Got any evidence? (Score:3, Insightful)
Evidence in the form of the number of actions taken against American firms, as opposed to actions taken against European firms would really help make your case. For bonus points, show that American firms don't actually deserve the 'abuse' by committing more crimes than their European counterparts. Without some sort of evidence, your post is simply pro-American, anti-European jingoism. Probably boiling down to either 'Capitalism GOOD, socialism BAD!' or simple flag waving nationalism, rather than any kind of logical thought process.
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, are you saying American businesses are too stupid to avoid bad business situations? You make it sound as if you think of Europe as our enemy, rather than our staunchest allies. I mean, how DARE they provide better health care for less money than we do and make our capitalist health care system look bad? How DARE they get 32 hour work weeks with minimum one month of vacation. Here we are, working our asses off, and we aren't any happier than them for it. The bottom 80% of our society aren't any richer for it, either. That's just not fair, and obviously, they are evil for not fellating their owning class like we do. Why, if they aren't stopped, our peasantry might just get uppity ideas on their heads and start thinking they should get a share in our increase in GDP.
Re:Blaming the Govt. Strawman (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the talent leaving, that happens in any merger because, once again, people hate uncertainty. If someone is facing a lot of uncertainty in his job, and has the ability to go elsewhere, he will probably do so. Ironically, the people most likely to move on are often the ones that would have been the most likely to be kept by the new company anyway, since they tend to be the top talent.
relevance (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM strategy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Really? Got any evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
But $1.5B is in proportion to the fines given to some European companies. (And EU companies are fined by the EU, but it doesn't make the news in the USA.)
(PS Post in ~4 hours when all us Europeans are asleep, and the Americans will mod you up.)
Re:Blaming the Govt. Strawman (Score:4, Insightful)
But anyone in that position knows that those assurances aren't worth the air breathed to utter them.
Given today's job market, if you're in an uncertain position, and you get a good offer elsewhere that seems more certain -- you take it.
What happens if the regulators deny the merger application? If you've stuck around, now you're in a lame-duck company and you can see your employer has lost a large portion of your customer base to IBM.
What happens if the merger is accepted? At least now you've got a chance of your employer taking advantage of Oracle's sales & marketing force, etc. That is, if you're not let go as a result of the merger.
In short, employees are leaving Sun because they don't like uncertainty. Never mind the customers leaving Sun for the same reason (amongst other reasons).
The length of time it's taking for the review process is definitely a factor.
That said, I think the review is important, and I hope it's taking so long because of thoroughness, not because of some stupid attempt to hamstring American companies.
Re:Really? Got any evidence? (Score:2, Insightful)
$1.5B is only 1% of their net worth. Their actions have probably damaged the consumer market. Anything less and it's like fining a billionaire $100 for running a stop sign. The same issues exists with MS. The US could have put a stop to some of their actions. However, US regulators just turn a blind eye and look at where we are now.
Re:Two different things (Score:2, Insightful)
The other is that the slowness is causing people to leave. I doubt the latter is true.
Well, I can't speak for anyone else here, but I have to say that the suspense is killing me. Beginning to seriously question whether or not I feel like sticking around for another quarter to find out whether or not the new overlords are interested in what my group is doing.
And then, of course, there's the question of whether or not I want to work for Oracle to begin with. Were I not a wage-slave with mortgage, family, etc. I'd probably be more proactive about making something else happen. As it is, though, I'm just about there anyhow. We're already getting the house ready for sale, polishing up our resumes, reaching out to contacts, etc.
I suppose I'd better click the Post Anonymously box up there, shouldn't I...
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Engineers need interesting work and great colleagues. Without those things, the great engineers will bail and a vicious downward spiral will begin. This is why I am never surprised when government sponsored information system re-writes spend millions of dollars and never finish (California DMV).
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mergers rarely go well (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know why big companies keep merging despite the fact that tech mergers rarely seem to be worth it. Is it short-sided greed and ego that keeps driving mergers? Hit-and-run lawyers? Why don't they learn that it's too likely to flop? I don't get it.
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
SO basically (Score:3, Insightful)
Three ex-sun developers didn't have Oracle kiss their rears and so they left and tried to get a little hype for themselves by saying their former masters are dying. Regardless of whether or not its true, the whole way they tried to get some press is pathetic. If they want to make news, make a product release with cool features.
Re:This is a bullshit reason for delaying it (Score:3, Insightful)
They cannot close source MariaDB, Drizzle, etc.
Ah, the names. They sure do inspire confidence in the enterprise space, I gotta say.
Re:Oracle is OK (Score:3, Insightful)
The large apps on the internet are all moving away from RDBMS and into scalable key value stores.
And when those who've migrated discover in a few years that they can no longer manage their data in any meaningful fashion, they'll re-invent the wheel, give it a shiny new name, and waste cubic miles of breath denying that this is what they've done.
Re:FUD article (Score:5, Insightful)
At the fortune 100 companies I've worked with, AIX was legacy and stagnant, and being retired as quickly as possible. Solaris was losing servers to Linux starting with the web/application servers and moving into the Database space (replacing Oracle and DB2, in some cases with Mysql for smaller databases). Applications that could be run on virtualization were the next big thing to move to Linux. If they could replace large sun boxes (and expensive sun hardware/software service contracts) with a bunch of 1Us or Blades connected to a SAN, it was done.
At one financial institution it was even mandated that Linux be tested before any other Unix because of the cost savings.
WOW short sighted a bit ?? (Score:1, Insightful)
Let us look back on a long and storied history of World Geopolitcal, Economic and Military abuses ?? Hmmm the US is 200+ years old and has a decent history of such, however let us examine Spainish, English, or German history and compare the length and breadth of their abuses. There is NO ROOM on either side for stone throwing, that is what governments do, LEVERAGE their power while they have it to try and establish the highest standard of living and profit for their citizens. The thought that scares me the most is when the EU and the US STOP fighting and decide that cooperation allows them MORE POWER and control.
We all need to get off the horse, and out of the way of the runaway carriage...
posting anon to preserve mod's
Re:Really? Got any evidence? (Score:2, Insightful)
I asked for a numerical analysis of numbers of American companies versus number of European companies and he gives me a few more cherry picked anecdotes. You, in your infinite wisdom, consider this having my ass handed to me. Did you even take debate in high school? Do you know how this is supposed to work? Thought not.
Re:Meh. (Score:3, Insightful)
US health care system is fine. The US health insurance system sucks balls though.
Re:Oracle is OK (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't being an Oracle employee, it's being an Oracle customer. That seems to be a seriously negative experience for a lot of people.
Re:Really? Got any evidence? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Shipping WMP with Windows was a crime, as was not providing a browser choice tool. Anti-competitive actions taken by a monopoly are a crime in most jurisdictions. The EU has gone after plenty of European companies for the same things.
Your post is yet more fact free jingoism.
Re:European Commission SUCKS (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't have any obligations outside the US whatsoever, of course. Until they want to do business in the biggest economy of the world. Then they have to play by their rules.
I really don't understand how this is so hard to fathom - the biggest market in the world is not something a business like Oracle can ignore, even if they share your misguided xenophobia.
BTW, movie industries sell regionally because they can make more that way, not less.
Re:Oracle is OK (Score:4, Insightful)
Ever try to do GIS in a key-value store? Statistical analysis? Data mining? Billing?
Key value stores are great for high throughput applications that have very simple and predictable access modes. But for anything else, you are much better of with a RDBMS.
The front line customer apps is not where the money is. It never was, and it never will.
Re:What's EC got to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
How can the European Commission block the merger of two US firms?
The short answer is that they can't. The companies are free to go ahead and merge without receiving EU permission. They are also free to not sell anything in the EU or be fined heavily if they attempt to do so. I doubt that Oracle wants to give up this lucrative market.
Why do so many of my fellow Americans have trouble understanding this? Are you dense? Governments do this sort of thing. They actually want to have a say about what gets sold in their countries and by whom. And, frankly, what you think of the practice is irrelevant, unless you can get enough people to agree to convince our government to negotiate a treaty or declare war, since you have no voice in any government but that of the US. Suck it up...
Sun signed its own death warrant (Score:1, Insightful)
As much as anyone else, I want(ed) Sun to succeed. It's an engineer's company.
But fact is they signed their own warrant. They made a catastrophic failure of monetising java (despite all the mobile rhetoric). Reality is there wouldn't /be/ an enterprise java market had the likes of IBM not figured out how to sell stuff to big companies.
Sun hasn't successfully executed anything for too long. It put all its eggs in the java basket. It even gave the top gig to the man who oversaw its inability to make software a commercial viability.
I'd love to see Sun return to the successful, engineer's company it once was. Just ain't gonna happen. How should it die? With the good engineers (and there's _LOTS_ of them) whisked off to success elsewhere. And Shwartz given a paintbrush and told to learn his trade form the bottom up.
Re:Really? Got any evidence? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are trying to make your case by presenting one side. You've shown absolutely nothing to prove that the EU does not do the same thing to EU companies. You have also not shown that the US companies did not deserve the criminal and civil sanctions they received.
Oh, and Boeing doesn't need Airbus flight software, Boeing's is better. Yet we don't see Boeing getting hit by the EU.
Just out of curiosity, your citations are so one sided, where are you getting your data from? Does Fox News have a Two Minute Hate spot on the nasty socialist EU nowadays?
Sovereignty. . . (Score:3, Insightful)
"Why do so many of my fellow Americans have trouble understanding this? Are you dense? Governments do this sort of thing. They actually want to have a say about what gets sold in their countries and by whom."
Yes, yes, that's all fine and good. However, seems to me that something like a merger of two foreign companies who both happen to do business in your country is rather a bit out of the purview of *another* country's authority.
"since you have no voice in any government but that of the US."
And why should any country's leaders feel they have the right to interfere in the U.S.? What I mean is, if Oracle or Sun got permission previously to do business in European countries, then after a merger, they should at least have a right to continue doing the same business as before. Now, granted, if they wish to *modify* their business in those foreign countries (for example, discontinue a product which has become redundant, or introduce new products they weren't selling in that country before), I certainly see the validity of that country reviewing the changes of *business* they wish to do, but not changes of *ownership*.
I'm sorry, but I just do not see that it is anything less than a loss of sovereignty for the US, to expect that US business must get foreign approval for changes in ownership.
Re:FUD article (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice bit of jingoism there... (Score:5, Insightful)
..the European Commission, which seems to get off on abusing American firms...
Oh, horseshit. I've worked in American companies with European offices for years and have seen no such thing. Europeans are just as happy to take American dollars as anyone else. The EC countries do, however, have rather more stringent antitrust laws than the United States (and more consumer protections, more privacy laws, and so on). If you do business in a country, you have to respect their laws, just as European countries doing business in the US have to respect our laws (or our lawlessness in many matters). That Microsoft and Oracle -- two companies that are hardly well-loved here -- have had trouble in Europe hardly constitutes a pattern of "abusing American firms".
It may be that the real issue here is that Oracle, like Microsoft, gets off on anti-competitive practices, and as a result often finds itself up against laws against the same, in Europe as well as the US.
Re:Meh. (Score:4, Insightful)
By massive corporate profits, of course.
IBM tearing Sun to shreds (Score:4, Insightful)
I read the 'tearing sun to shreds' article and it sure was exaggerated.
The article title is "Defections Batter Sun Micro.".....whatever. Three jruby developers left, and they didn't go to IBM.
Next the article talks about 170 sun customers going to IBM. And then mentions that none of Sun's big customers have switched to IBM. I wasn't able to find the total Sun customer count...but I'll take a guess and say that 170 is less than 1% of their total.
I know that Sungard.com's Luminis portal for higher ed is mostly installed on Solaris, and there are 75+ installations of that one application alone. One app (Luminis), for one business type (Edu), is nearly half of this "massive exodus" away from Sun.... give me a break hehe.
Re:Meh. (Score:3, Insightful)
The mere fact that health care is treated as a commodity that can be bought and sold for a given price rather than as a necessary service is a rather fundamental part of the problem with our health care system. The insurance companies shouldn't get special deals. They should have to pay what I would pay walking in off the street, or more to the point, hospitals should be required by law to give everyone the same deal as the lowest price they give to any insurance provider. That one tiny change would solve a big part of what's wrong with health care today---no preferential pricing for anyone, including other insurance providers. With that change, smaller insurers would be on equal footing with the giants, and immediately we'd start to see some real competition in health insurance.
The thing is, health care isn't at all like buying goods in bulk. I can't go in and say, "I'd like to have five appendectomies, please---one for now, and the other four for when I need them." Well, I could, but they'd look at me like I was nuts. It's no less nuts for the insurance companies to ask for bulk discounts, but for some reason, they get them anyway. It's not like people generally choose a hospital based on which network it is in, and if they do, they shouldn't. At best, that might affect a choice of clinics or personal physicians. When you're sick enough to need a hospital, you should always choose medical care based on getting the best care, and any system put in place that pushes people towards choosing a hospital based on cost is by design a race to the bottom (in quality, anyway). Such conditions never benefit the consumer in the long run, and our health care system will only continue to deteriorate as long as insurance companies are allowed to get special bulk buying power from hospitals.
Re:Blaming the Govt. Strawman (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm a Romanian residing in France, I know what I'm talking about.
That explains the attitude...
Re:Meh. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a nice analysis of the study, thanks.
However flawed, having lived in both France and the USA (as well as other countries) I have an opinion of course. I can attest that the level of care in France is pretty good (choice of doctor and general quality of care) as well as easily and cheaply accessible for all. I have a good friend being treated for cancer right now in France, and she is treated completely for free, with the best treatment available in the literature for her condition as far as I have been able to research, even though she is actually not French and currently unemployed. She will continue to get free care until she is cured (which, thank God, looks likely). That is pretty good in my book. This is not a isolated case, this is a policy.
Now in the US I have another friend who went through childbirth in a hospital L.A., a throroughly normal birth took place with zero complication, she spent 3 days in hospital with her baby, and was billed $15k by the hospital and $5k by her gynecologist. Her husband being currently not unemployed, her insurance took most of the bill but she still had a few hundred US$ to pay.
I'm sure everyone have their favourite horror story but here is another one on the US health care. Yet another friend of mine came back to college in Texas (A&M Uni.) from Ivory Coast sick with malaria. The college hospital did not find what was wrong with her. After a few days of very high temperature, she was transfered to Austin, where they suspected everything wrongly and were putting her on the list for liver transplant, until her parents turned up and told the doctors what her condition most likely was. After a few days of a quinine or equivalent regimen she was basically fine again and sent home. However her prolonged stay in hospital blew the ceiling on her insurance and she was left with a debt of many 10s of thousands of US$. With no other rescourse, she went to the TAMU lawyer and sued both hospitals for malpractice. This was settled out of court, and my friend eventually paid nothing, the lawyer worked pro-bono.
OK, these are perhaps anecdotal, but a bit more than that I think. My wife has had two kids in two different countries, neither being the US, and we never had anything to pay for childbirth. I'm pretty sure that if my malaria-affected friend had been treated in most western countries the doctors would have perhaps apologised for their incompetence and certainly refrained from sending her such an outrageous bill. I'm also pretty sure that you have to look far and wide in the US for a hospital that will give you top-level cancer care for free.
There you have in a nutshell why the US health system is poorly ranked. Having the best level of care in the world means nothing if one can't afford it, and if public health policies are driven by greed.
The US people deserve and can afford better.
Solaris v Linux, and the role of SPARC (Score:4, Insightful)
the Cult of the CEO, Olsen & McNealy
transfer control from Engineering to Marketing
getting into, and spending lots of money on, fights that are Just not Worth Winning, JAVA
SUN grew, and outpaced Apollo (domain) HP and the when HP bought Apollo's market share, both again.
But it did not take long for in-fighting and huberis to set in and bring SUN to where they are today,
so that Oracle is today's Compaq.
Oracle will kill both the SPARC and Java track as they exist today as neither can be monetized. It will be
very intersting if Java can succeeed on its merits, I hope not, Python is a far nicer language.
more FUD about EU (Score:3, Insightful)
and the European Commission, which seems to get off on abusing American firms
In what way is the European Commission "abusing American firms"? Seems to me they are doing exactly what a regulatory authority for a big market like the EU should do, and they are regulating European firms just as much as American firms.
Re:FUD article (Score:3, Insightful)
For not to mention very biased. The European Union is doing its job here, unlike the US authorities who simply cut short the investigation and accepted the merger due to plunging profits in SUN. There is real issues here: Java is the most dominant development tool not only for Oracle but SAP and IBM and so on. Just because SUN is failing does not reduce this threat. This is the only time the government has a chance at setting requirements for preventing unfair competition.
Re:Oracle is OK (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IBM strategy (Score:3, Insightful)