Sun acquisition by Oracle
Encyclopedia
The acquisition of Sun Microsystems
by Oracle Corporation
was completed by Oracle on January 27, 2010. Significantly, Oracle, previously only a software vendor, now owned both hardware and software product lines from Sun (e.g. SPARCstation
s and Java, respectively).
A major issue of the purchase was the fact that Sun was a major competitor to Oracle, raising many concerns among antitrust
regulators, open source advocates, customers, and employees. The EU Commission delayed the acquisition for several months over concerns of Oracle's plans for MySQL
, Sun's competitor to the Oracle Database
. The commission finally approved the takeover, apparently pressured by the U.S. to do so, according to a Wikileaks
cable released in September 2011.
to discuss a possible merger. At about the same time, Sun also began discussions with another company, widely rumored but unconfirmed to be Hewlett Packard, about a potential acquisition. By March of 2009, talks had stalled between Sun and both IBM and the other potential suitor.
On April 20, 2009, Sun and Oracle Corporation
announced that they had entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle would acquire Sun for $9.50 a share in cash. Net of Sun's cash and debt, this amounts to a $5.6 billion dollar offer from Oracle. Sun's shareholders voted to approve the proposal on July 16, 2009, although the deal was still subject to regulatory approvals. Terms of the agreement between Oracle and Sun included dependencies on the antitrust laws of "the United States and Canada, European Union, China, Israel, Switzerland, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Korea, Japan, Mexico and South Africa".
On August 20, 2009, it was reported that the U.S. government, pursuant to the Clayton Antitrust Act
, approved Oracle's purchase of Sun.
On September 3, 2009, the European Commission
announced that it would not immediately approve the deal, but would instead perform a second round of investigation, focusing on the implications of Oracle's control of MySQL
(acquired by Sun in 2008).
On October 20, 2009, Sun filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) its intention to cut 3,000 jobs globally over next 12 months, citing losses caused by delays in the acquisition process.
On November 6, in its 10-Q filing for the 1st quarter of the 2010 fiscal year, Sun announced 25% total revenue decrease, compared to the 1st quarter of the previous year, due to "economic downturn, the uncertainty associated with our proposed acquisition by Oracle, increased competition and delays in customer purchasing decisions".
On January 21, 2010, EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes
announced unconditional approval of the deal.
On January 27, 2010, Oracle announced that it had completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, making Sun a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle.
, the creator of Java (resigned April 2010), Tim Bray
, the creator of XML
(resigned April 2009), and Bryan Cantrill
, the co-creator of DTrace
(resigned July 2010).
While the deal was still pending regulatory approval, the JRuby
team collectively resigned from Sun and moved to Engine Yard
.
The Drizzle DBMS team collectively resigned from Sun and moved to Rackspace
.
Most of Sun's executive management team, including CEO Jonathan Schwartz
, resigned immediately after the acquisition was complete. John Fowler, Executive VP of Sun's systems group, remained at Oracle as Executive Vice President of Hardware Engineering.
In addition, Simon Phipps
, Sun's Chief Open Source
Officer, and Tim Bray
, Sun's Director of Web Technologies also left the company.
. It was omitted from Oracle Product roadmaps and End of Life Documents were published on Oracle's website. A statement from Oracle read "Keep it movin', folks ... nothing to see here. The page is a policy page to describe how the service life of the product works. [We're] not announcing EOL [for OpenSolaris]."
Then in August 2010, leaked documents indicated that Oracle would end releases of OpenSolaris at 2010.05
. In addition, it would no longer release the developing Solaris source code during development. Instead it would only publish it after each new version of Solaris is released. Since Oracle was no longer supporting all the development of an open version of Solaris, the OpenSolaris Governing Board disbanded, ending the project. Independent development continues with the OpenIndiana
fork
.
, an open-source competitor to Oracle acquired by Sun in February 2008, as part of the deal.
In response, several forks were made with the intent to ensure the future success of MySQL despite being purchased by its biggest competitor. These include Drizzle
and MariaDB
. Monty Widenius, one of the founders of MySQL, also started a petition asking that MySQL either be divested to a third party, or have its licensing changed to be less restrictive than the previous GPL terms it operated under prior to and during its ownership by Sun.
over its use of Java in the Android platform. Android apps run in the Dalvik Java virtual machine
. The apps are written in Java but are compiled into Dalvik's custom bytecode format which is incompatible with standard Java runtime environments. Google thus avoided licensing fees associated with J2ME, the mobile version of Java. However, aspects of the Dalvik system are very similar to the Java technology patented by Sun and now Oracle.
Regardless of the legal merits, commentators have questioned the wisdom of the lawsuit over Android, a platform which has reinvigorated the Java community. In addition, it gave another worrying signal to open source community members about Oracle's stewardship of open technology.
open-source implementation of Java
Project became worried about their project's future with Oracle. Thus they formed The Document Foundation
and created the LibreOffice
fork. The LibreOffice brand was hoped to be provisional, as Oracle had been invited to join The Document Foundation and donate the OpenOffice.org brand.
In response Oracle demanded that all members of the OpenOffice.org Community Council involved with The Document Foundation step down from the Council, citing a conflict of interest. Many community members decided to leave for LibreOffice
, which already had the support of Red Hat
, Novell
, Google, and Canonical. LibreOffice produced its first release in January 2011.
, a Sourceforge-like project for Java apps, was migrated to Java.net by Oracle.
Project Darkstar
, a project to investigate and create solutions for issues in massive online gaming environments, was closed by Oracle on February 2, 2010 .
In March 2010 the Solaris 10 download license changed to limit unpaid use to 90 days.
Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
by Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
was completed by Oracle on January 27, 2010. Significantly, Oracle, previously only a software vendor, now owned both hardware and software product lines from Sun (e.g. SPARCstation
SPARCstation
The SPARCstation, SPARCserver and SPARCcenter product lines were a series of SPARC-based computer workstations and servers in desktop, deskside and rack-based form factor developed and sold by Sun Microsystems...
s and Java, respectively).
A major issue of the purchase was the fact that Sun was a major competitor to Oracle, raising many concerns among antitrust
Antitrust
The United States antitrust law is a body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior and unfair business practices. Antitrust laws are intended to encourage competition in the marketplace. These competition laws make illegal certain practices deemed to hurt businesses or consumers or both,...
regulators, open source advocates, customers, and employees. The EU Commission delayed the acquisition for several months over concerns of Oracle's plans for MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
, Sun's competitor to the Oracle Database
Oracle Database
The Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....
. The commission finally approved the takeover, apparently pressured by the U.S. to do so, according to a Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
cable released in September 2011.
History
In late 2008, Sun was approached by IBMIBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
to discuss a possible merger. At about the same time, Sun also began discussions with another company, widely rumored but unconfirmed to be Hewlett Packard, about a potential acquisition. By March of 2009, talks had stalled between Sun and both IBM and the other potential suitor.
On April 20, 2009, Sun and Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
announced that they had entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle would acquire Sun for $9.50 a share in cash. Net of Sun's cash and debt, this amounts to a $5.6 billion dollar offer from Oracle. Sun's shareholders voted to approve the proposal on July 16, 2009, although the deal was still subject to regulatory approvals. Terms of the agreement between Oracle and Sun included dependencies on the antitrust laws of "the United States and Canada, European Union, China, Israel, Switzerland, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Korea, Japan, Mexico and South Africa".
On August 20, 2009, it was reported that the U.S. government, pursuant to the Clayton Antitrust Act
Clayton Antitrust Act
The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 , was enacted in the United States to add further substance to the U.S. antitrust law regime by seeking to prevent anticompetitive practices in their incipiency. That regime started with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the first Federal law outlawing practices...
, approved Oracle's purchase of Sun.
On September 3, 2009, the European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
announced that it would not immediately approve the deal, but would instead perform a second round of investigation, focusing on the implications of Oracle's control of MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
(acquired by Sun in 2008).
On October 20, 2009, Sun filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) its intention to cut 3,000 jobs globally over next 12 months, citing losses caused by delays in the acquisition process.
On November 6, in its 10-Q filing for the 1st quarter of the 2010 fiscal year, Sun announced 25% total revenue decrease, compared to the 1st quarter of the previous year, due to "economic downturn, the uncertainty associated with our proposed acquisition by Oracle, increased competition and delays in customer purchasing decisions".
On January 21, 2010, EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes
Neelie Kroes
Neelie Kroes is a Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy . She served as a Member of the House of Representatives from 3 August 1971 until 28 December 1977 when she became State Secretary for Transport, Public Works and Water Management from 28 December 1977 until 11...
announced unconditional approval of the deal.
On January 27, 2010, Oracle announced that it had completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, making Sun a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle.
Resignations
Several notable engineers resigned following the acquisition, including James GoslingJames Gosling
James A. Gosling, OC is a computer scientist, best known as the father of the Java programming language.-Education and career:In 1977, Gosling received a B.Sc in Computer Science from the University of Calgary...
, the creator of Java (resigned April 2010), Tim Bray
Tim Bray
Timothy William Bray is a Canadian software developer and entrepreneur. He co-founded Open Text Corporation and Antarctica Systems. Bray was Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems from early 2004 to early 2010. Since then he has served as a Developer Advocate at Google, focusing on...
, the creator of XML
Extensible Markup Language
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
(resigned April 2009), and Bryan Cantrill
Bryan Cantrill
Bryan M. Cantrill is an engineer who worked at Sun Microsystems and later at Oracle Corporation following its acquisition by Sun. He left Oracle on July 25, 2010 to become the Vice President of Engineering at Joyent....
, the co-creator of DTrace
DTrace
DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time...
(resigned July 2010).
While the deal was still pending regulatory approval, the JRuby
JRuby
JRuby is a Java implementation of the Ruby programming language, being developed by the JRuby team. It is free software released under a three-way CPL/GPL/LGPL license...
team collectively resigned from Sun and moved to Engine Yard
Engine Yard
Engine Yard is a San Francisco, California based company focused on Ruby on Rails deployment and management-Software development:One of Engine Yard's four founders, Ezra Zygmuntowicz, was the creator of the Merb project, and the company continued supporting the project by hiring Yehuda Katz to work...
.
The Drizzle DBMS team collectively resigned from Sun and moved to Rackspace
Rackspace
Rackspace US, Inc. is an IT hosting company based in San Antonio, Texas. The company also has offices in Australia, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Hong Kong, and data centers operating in Texas, Illinois, Virginia, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong in late 2008...
.
Most of Sun's executive management team, including CEO Jonathan Schwartz
Jonathan I. Schwartz
Jonathan Ian Schwartz is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Picture of Health. He was formerly the President and CEO of Sun Microsystems prior to its acquisition by Oracle, and previously the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Lighthouse Design, Ltd., a software company focused on...
, resigned immediately after the acquisition was complete. John Fowler, Executive VP of Sun's systems group, remained at Oracle as Executive Vice President of Hardware Engineering.
In addition, Simon Phipps
Simon Phipps (programmer)
Simon Phipps is a computer scientist and web and open source advocate.Phipps was instrumental in IBM's involvement in the Java programming language, founding IBM's Java Technology Center. He left IBM for Sun Microsystems in 2000, taking leadership of Sun's open source programme from Danese Cooper...
, Sun's Chief Open Source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
Officer, and Tim Bray
Tim Bray
Timothy William Bray is a Canadian software developer and entrepreneur. He co-founded Open Text Corporation and Antarctica Systems. Bray was Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems from early 2004 to early 2010. Since then he has served as a Developer Advocate at Google, focusing on...
, Sun's Director of Web Technologies also left the company.
OpenSolaris
In early 2010, troubling signals began to emerge concerning the future of OpenSolarisOpenSolaris
OpenSolaris was an open source computer operating system based on Solaris created by Sun Microsystems. It was also the name of the project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around the software...
. It was omitted from Oracle Product roadmaps and End of Life Documents were published on Oracle's website. A statement from Oracle read "Keep it movin', folks ... nothing to see here. The page is a policy page to describe how the service life of the product works. [We're] not announcing EOL [for OpenSolaris]."
Then in August 2010, leaked documents indicated that Oracle would end releases of OpenSolaris at 2010.05
May
May is the fifth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian Calendars and one of seven months with the length of 31 days.May is a month of autumn in the Southern Hemisphere and spring in the Northern Hemisphere...
. In addition, it would no longer release the developing Solaris source code during development. Instead it would only publish it after each new version of Solaris is released. Since Oracle was no longer supporting all the development of an open version of Solaris, the OpenSolaris Governing Board disbanded, ending the project. Independent development continues with the OpenIndiana
OpenIndiana
OpenIndiana is a Unix-like computer operating system released as free and open source software. It forked from OpenSolaris after the discontinuation of that project by Oracle and aims to continue development and distribution of the OpenSolaris codebase. The project operates under the umbrella of...
fork
Fork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
.
MySQL petition and forks
A major issue discussed in media and considered by the EU Competition Commission was Oracle's acquisition of MySQLMySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
, an open-source competitor to Oracle acquired by Sun in February 2008, as part of the deal.
In response, several forks were made with the intent to ensure the future success of MySQL despite being purchased by its biggest competitor. These include Drizzle
Drizzle (database server)
Drizzle is a free software/open source relational database management system that was forked from version 6.0 of the MySQL DBMS.Like MySQL, Drizzle has a client/server architecture and uses SQL as its primary command language...
and MariaDB
MariaDB
MariaDB is a community-developed branch of the MySQL database, the impetus being the community maintenance of its free status under GPL, as opposed to any uncertainty of MySQL license status under its current ownership by Oracle....
. Monty Widenius, one of the founders of MySQL, also started a petition asking that MySQL either be divested to a third party, or have its licensing changed to be less restrictive than the previous GPL terms it operated under prior to and during its ownership by Sun.
Java Android lawsuit
Oracle filed a patent infringement lawsuit against GoogleGoogle
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
over its use of Java in the Android platform. Android apps run in the Dalvik Java virtual machine
Java Virtual Machine
A Java virtual machine is a virtual machine capable of executing Java bytecode. It is the code execution component of the Java software platform. Sun Microsystems stated that there are over 4.5 billion JVM-enabled devices.-Overview:...
. The apps are written in Java but are compiled into Dalvik's custom bytecode format which is incompatible with standard Java runtime environments. Google thus avoided licensing fees associated with J2ME, the mobile version of Java. However, aspects of the Dalvik system are very similar to the Java technology patented by Sun and now Oracle.
Regardless of the legal merits, commentators have questioned the wisdom of the lawsuit over Android, a platform which has reinvigorated the Java community. In addition, it gave another worrying signal to open source community members about Oracle's stewardship of open technology.
Apache Software Foundation resignations
The Apache Software Foundation has resigned its seat on the Java SE/EE Executive Committee due Oracle’s refusal to provide a technology compatibility kit (TCK) to the ASF for its Apache HarmonyApache Harmony
Apache Harmony was an open source, free Java implementation, developed by the Apache Software Foundation. It was announced in early May 2005 and on October 25, 2006, the Board of Directors voted to make Apache Harmony a top-level project...
open-source implementation of Java
OpenOffice resignations and fork
After Oracle ended OpenSolaris, some members of the similarly open source OpenOffice.orgOpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...
Project became worried about their project's future with Oracle. Thus they formed The Document Foundation
The Document Foundation
The Document Foundation is an open-source software organization. It was created by members of the OpenOffice.org community to manage and develop a fork called LibreOffice. The goal is to produce a vendor-independent office suite with ODF support and without any copyright assignment requirements...
and created the LibreOffice
LibreOffice
LibreOffice is a free and open source office suite developed by The Document Foundation as a fork of OpenOffice.org. It is largely compatible with other major office suites, including Microsoft Office, and available on a variety of platforms...
fork. The LibreOffice brand was hoped to be provisional, as Oracle had been invited to join The Document Foundation and donate the OpenOffice.org brand.
In response Oracle demanded that all members of the OpenOffice.org Community Council involved with The Document Foundation step down from the Council, citing a conflict of interest. Many community members decided to leave for LibreOffice
LibreOffice
LibreOffice is a free and open source office suite developed by The Document Foundation as a fork of OpenOffice.org. It is largely compatible with other major office suites, including Microsoft Office, and available on a variety of platforms...
, which already had the support of Red Hat
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....
, Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...
, Google, and Canonical. LibreOffice produced its first release in January 2011.
Program closures
Project KenaiProject Kenai
Project Kenai is a collaborative hosting site for free and open source projects, launched by Sun Microsystems and now owned by Oracle. The service will be discontinued move the existing Kenai.com projects over to the Java.net domain for public use as part of Oracle's restructuring of...
, a Sourceforge-like project for Java apps, was migrated to Java.net by Oracle.
Project Darkstar
Project Darkstar
Project Darkstar was an open source MMOG middleware solution written in Java by the Project Darkstar team at Sun Microsystems. It was a research project headed by Sun Microsystems engineer Jim Waldo that was publicly released on August 30, 2007, and "aims to help developers and operators avoid a...
, a project to investigate and create solutions for issues in massive online gaming environments, was closed by Oracle on February 2, 2010 .
Customer Relations
Oracle has changed the software support model to also require hardware support. The new policy states "when acquiring technical support, all hardware systems must be supported (e.g., Oracle Premier Support for Systems or Oracle Premier Support for Operating Systems) or unsupported."In March 2010 the Solaris 10 download license changed to limit unpaid use to 90 days.