Oracle closes Sun acquisition. The state of the union at Red Hat. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Oracle has completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

# Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst discussed the current State of the Union at Red Hat.

# Oracle told eWeek Java will be “business as usual”.

# CNet published Scott McNealy’s farewell email to Sun employees.

# The WSJ reported that Larry Ellison …

WordPress Foundation formed. Reaction to Oracle-Sun approval. And more.

WordPress Foundation formed
# Matt Mullenwag launched the WordPress Foundation.

Reaction to Oracle-Sun’s EC approval
# In a memo Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz encouraged the company’s employees to emotionally resign from Sun.

# EnterpriseDB and PostgreSQL co-founder Bruce Momjian issued a statement on the EC’s decision to approve Oracle-Sun.

# Mike Hogan …

EC approves Oracle-Sun. Google patents MapReduce. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

EC approves Oracle-Sun
The European Commission cleared Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems. While Larry Ellison is set to unveil Oracle’s Sun strategy on January 27th, Monty Widenius said he will go to the Court of First Instance to appeal the decision.

# Pro-open source political party formed in Hungary.

# Google …

Monty turns his attention to the East. The value of JBoss to Red Hat. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

For the latest on Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL via Sun, see Everything you always wanted to know about MySQL but were afraid to ask

# Monty Widenius predicted that the EU will clear Oracle-Sun “any moment”, turning his attention to Russia and China.

# Meanwhile the release candidate of MariaDB 5.1 is now …

VMware confirms Zimbra buy. Facebook sponsors Apache Foundation. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

For the latest on Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL via Sun, see Everything you always wanted to know about MySQL but were afraid to ask

# VMware confirmed its acquisition of Zimbra from Yahoo.

# Facebook became a gold sponsor of the Apache Foundation and outlined its …

Regular visitors to the 451 CAOS Theory blog will be well aware of The 451 Group’s CAOS (Commercial Adoption of Open Source) research service and our CAOS long-form reports.

They are probably less aware of the open source coverage that The 451 Group provides on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis, however, and I thought it would be worthwhile to provide some examples of The 451 Group’s ongoing open source coverage by highlighting a few recent reports.

The company’s core services are 451 Market Insight Service, which delivers daily insight into emerging enterprise IT markets, and 451 TechDealmaker, a forward-looking weekly …

Eclipse adds OSGi server. VMware-Zimbra deal due today? And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

For the latest on Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL via Sun, see Everything you always wanted to know about MySQL but were afraid to ask

# VMware’s SpringSource proposed that its dm Server OSGi-based app server become an Eclipse.org community project, while SAP proposed the Graphiti project.

# All …

A recent pitch from the folks opposing Oracle’s ownership of MySQL via acquisition of Sun Microsystems got me thinking. The plea, ‘Oracle can have Sun, but not MySQL’ may make sense to some, but to me it speaks to the irony of closing out Oracle or any company or anyone from open source. Upon further reflection and given 2010 is off to a roaring pace of M&A, I also began to wonder what the impact of the ‘Save MySQL’ campaign could be on open source in M&A, particularly if it was to successfully derail the acquisition or somehow decouple MySQL from Sun under Oracle?

What would it mean to carve out the open source projects, components, teams and support from companies involved in mergers and acquisitions over …

Google unveils the Nexus One. RMS explains his position on dual licensing. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory on Twitter and Identi.ca
“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

For the latest on Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL via Sun, see Everything you always wanted to know about MySQL but were afraid to ask

# Google launched the Nexus One Android phone.

# Richard Stallman explained his position on selling exceptions to the GNU GPL.

# Novell’s chief technology and …

A couple of posts have been published recently worrying about the impact of more open source specialist vendors being acquired by proprietary vendors.

This is an issue that crops up occasionally. Usually when a major acquisition has been announced, and the current questioning seems to be driven by the ongoing saga of Oracle-Sun-MySQL, as well as the rumoured purchase of Zimbra by VMware.

While fear of the unknown is understandable, to my mind the concern about open source specialists being acquired by proprietary vendors is driven by parochialism and misplaced assumptions about the rate of acquisitions and the acquiring company’s intentions.

For a start the statistics suggest that acquisitions involving …