Big companies have a lot of stuff - more details about Oracle and Sun

Proving again how little I know, this Oracle-Sun deal continues to turn up potential issues.

When I first blogged about this on April 20, I noted:

Perhaps Oracle has acquired a hardware vendor before and I've missed it, but this is still unusual. More importantly than hardware, however, Oracle now owns Java.

A little later, someone mentioned that Oracle would now potentially own MySQL. Now this got interesting.

Fast-forward to June 9, and Brian "Bex" Huff pointed out another ramification:

Oracle -- as you know -- plans on purchasing Sun and all their Java-licious technology. This includes the open source Glassfish application server, which is a free competitor to Weblogic, which Oracle obtained in the Sun acquisition... and they both competed with OC4J, which was Oracle's application server prior to 2008.

Huff then made the understatement of the year - well, the understatement of the moment, until Oracle acquires Microsoft or Canada or something:

I -- along with everybody else -- am very curious to see how all this plays out...

Indeed.

This is a truism whenever a large company acquires another large company - or, for that matter, even when a small company acquires another small company. The acquiring entity is interested in the acquisition for reason X, but also knows, even before the acquisition, that there are some side effects to the acquisition. And AFTER the acquisition, when the two entities are free to talk to each other, is when you REALLY learn all sorts of stuff.

Perhaps Charles Phillips and Safra Katz didn't realize that Glassfish would be part of the deal. Perhaps they didn't care and figured they'd work it out later. Or perhaps they have a super-secret plan to rebrand MySQL and Glassfish as some type of entry-level suite.

So what's a lower grade of oracle - a soothsayer?