David Herron .com

So, hmm, Oracle+Sun. Interesting twist from the IBM+Sun matchup earlier. There has been numerous rumors over the years about SUN+xyzzy mergers such as Fujitsu, IBM, SGI, Apple, etc. And it's finally come to Oracle. It seems there's a lot of scratching of heads over what this will mean for the open source software projects run by Sun, and of course the back of my mind has been pondering the effect on the OpenJDK.

I've been gone from Sun for a little while now but of course I'm still interested in Java, and thankfully still have access to this java.net blog. Anyway the recent news about IBM pondering buying Sun has piqued my interest.

To me the potential hookup seems like a bad idea. Sun plays a useful role in the computer industry as an independent company, that would be lost if woven into IBM. And the tremendous overlap between Sun+IBM leaves me scratching my head over what they could be thinking.

Uh, not too likely but it's the rumor that never dies

Today I'm in at a conference, an unconference that is, about "Online Community". For years I've had this idea of using online community as a means of social change, that by helping people connect on a given topic they can use an online community forum to discuss that topic, resolve problems, help each other learn the topic, etc. An online community focused on a specific topic can focus attention on that topic.