Everyone but everyone has an opinion about this.
Of course I have an opinion too. But unlike the pundits I'll admit upfront that a) I'm wrong and b) I have no idea what I'm talking about. But there is c) which is I've been associated with three companies that were bought out.
The details are unimportant: the end result is. Customers were upset, people were laid off, careers derailed.
It Never Worked Out.
I think Tim Oren has the most succinct and correct summary of the issues. Everybody else I've read today - pretty much a bunch of guys who are system administrators of one type or another - is whistling past the graveyard that is Sun.
Long story short, Sun hardware is legacy, Solaris [1] is a dead OS walking, Java guys should crack an O'Reilly book on Python or Ruby, and MySQL has an interesting patch ahead.
Which, yes, is too g'd bad. And it doesn't make sense for Oracle [2] to buy a company and then mess with things. But guess what: companies do stuff like that all .. the .. time.
Ain't personal. The guys driving strategy just don't have any emotional involvement, don't care that you spent the last decade learning the ins/outs of Solaris and they could give a rat's behind that Sun hardware scales into spaces that a vendor like Dell can only dream of.
That is not their problem. Their problem is revenue. Oracle's revenue, not yours.
If you want a career in IT you gotta be flexible. Time to get cozy with Windows 2008, BSD, Linux, Ruby and PostgreSQL. And OS X on your desktop.
[1] SunOS if you are old school.
[2] I'm tryin' real hard Ringo to keep this from being a rant about Oracle.
Of course I have an opinion too. But unlike the pundits I'll admit upfront that a) I'm wrong and b) I have no idea what I'm talking about. But there is c) which is I've been associated with three companies that were bought out.
The details are unimportant: the end result is. Customers were upset, people were laid off, careers derailed.
It Never Worked Out.
I think Tim Oren has the most succinct and correct summary of the issues. Everybody else I've read today - pretty much a bunch of guys who are system administrators of one type or another - is whistling past the graveyard that is Sun.
Long story short, Sun hardware is legacy, Solaris [1] is a dead OS walking, Java guys should crack an O'Reilly book on Python or Ruby, and MySQL has an interesting patch ahead.
Which, yes, is too g'd bad. And it doesn't make sense for Oracle [2] to buy a company and then mess with things. But guess what: companies do stuff like that all .. the .. time.
Ain't personal. The guys driving strategy just don't have any emotional involvement, don't care that you spent the last decade learning the ins/outs of Solaris and they could give a rat's behind that Sun hardware scales into spaces that a vendor like Dell can only dream of.
That is not their problem. Their problem is revenue. Oracle's revenue, not yours.
If you want a career in IT you gotta be flexible. Time to get cozy with Windows 2008, BSD, Linux, Ruby and PostgreSQL. And OS X on your desktop.
[1] SunOS if you are old school.
[2] I'm tryin' real hard Ringo to keep this from being a rant about Oracle.
