Humor of the Week: JohnDvorak's Second Opinion

I just tumbled across JOHN DVORAK'S SECOND OPINION column which covers the Sun - MySQL deal. Rarely does one see such an ahem.. entertaining analysis from self proclaimed experts. Among the interesting points it makes:

• Sun has a poor history of acquisitions and this ensures that MySQL is dead meat for the future.
• MySQl was a candidate for acquisition by Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. However they let themselves be acquired by Sun for *only* US$1Billion as Swedes are loathe to do "anything that would appear flamboyant or be interpreted as (gasp) bragging" and thus there was no public/private bidding.
• Sun in an Oracle stooge sent by Larry Ellison to do its dirty job.

I wonder if any of the above merit any discussion. My take is that Oracle and Sun hardware are complementary products. When Oracle creates database clusters that run on inexpensive hardware, they directly threaten Sun. If you look at the way the market has shaped, hardware vendors are under more and more pressure from software suppliers. The only way Sun can fight Oracle's onslaught is to acquire MySQL, bundle it and make it a commodity as much as it can. Yes MySQL is free already, however maybe Sun feels that having a preconfigured, bundled supported and maintainable release eco-system of MySQL will be more beneficial for it in the long run.