Barnett, Jeffrey writes:
 > I know the answer is yes, but does anyone care to speculate on the
 > impact of Oracle's takeover of Sun, which controls in addition to
 > open source workhorse JAVA, MySQL, OpenOffice, and Netbeans (all of
 > which complete with proprietary products from Oracle).  I haven't
 > heard anything quotable recently from Larry Ellison, but he has in
 > the pass been an ardent opponent of OSS and I find it hard to
 > imagine him not taking advantage of this opportunity to place
 > roadblocks and/or booby traps in the way of the OSS community.

I foresee a forkfest.  Which of course is the beauty of Free Software:
even if the copyright is acquired by an Evil Empire, they can't stop
us from continuing to develop from the last freely-released version
onwards.  There will still be Java, MySQL, OpenOffice and (I suppose
it can't be avoided) NetBeans -- the only questions is how much Oracle
proposes to involve themselves in the maintenance and development
process.

 _/|_	 ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <[log in to unmask]>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Stay tuned for exciting news about chicken zygapophyses" --
	 Matt Wedel.