On the bright site, at least they're not trying to call it a merger.  Come to think of it, it's been a long time since I've heard that term.  Nope, Oracle has is purchasing Sun Microsystems... and with it get a number of interesting things.

• Sun's Hardware - Sun has long provided "decent" hardware.  We believe this to really be the key here.  Oracle is now positioned to control both hardware and software.  Oracle DB Appliance anyone?
• Solaris - An okay flavor of Unix that went open source not too long ago.  Unix makes a solid server environment, but there seems to be so much growth and attention in the linux world, is Solaris even still relevant?
• OpenOffice - A solid, viable contender that challenges Microsoft Office
• MySQL - Likely the most popular open source database environment
• Java - A very successful cross platform development language.
• Sun's client base - We venture to say that almost every major organization in the world has at least one Sun server, even if just for exploration purposes.  It's a widely known company with a large installed base that has openly fought Microsoft, which is something Oracle likes to do as well.

Most small businesses could care less about this aquisition except for one thing, MySQL.  There are lots of people in the Microsoft camp who speak of this not creating a new or stronger competitor for Microsoft.  Thinking on that line at this point is simply irrelevant.  The short term issue that needs to be addressed, is what will Oracle do with MySQL?

Thousands upon Thousands of websites are running with MySQL.  Even Antagonist Programmer uses it.  There are a number of reasons:

• It's solid - After many years of development and bug fixed, it works.
• It's fast.  Is it the fastest?  unknown, but for 99% of the websites and systems out there, it works just fine.
• It's open source.  Sure, here comes the argument that we as consumers are never really in control of an open source project, but we're far more comfortable having the source code than not.  Oracle can decide to drop MySQL alltogether and we believe a new spur would pick up the code and carry on.
• It's multi-platform - Conforming with Oracle's cross platform approach, MySQL runs on just about everything.  We Can't say that for Microsoft SQL, which requires costly licensing to run.

A quick look on the MySQL website shows not a peep about the acquisition or any major changes coming.  We're kinda left at this point with rolling the dice.  The best part, however, is that we all have the code or can easily get it.  So we can run the environment as long as we care to support it, should Oracle choose to shut it down, which we really don't see happening.

Oracle has been at the head of the class when it comes to high performance database systems and environments.  Sun/MySQL have offered different product levels from free/open source to enterprise class computing and computing services as their answer.  Something will give here... but likely not in the short term.

Oracle needs to keep the MySQL customers happy.  There's too much value in the masses.  So... there are basically three fundamental options.

1. Spin it off.  Sun purchased MySQL... seems possible to sell it as well... or perhaps even raise some cash with an IPO. 
2. Kill it.  Oracle certainly doesn't need MySQL.  In case you haven't heard, they already have a database engine.
3. Keep it, support it and help it grow.  Short of the original MySQL engineers, we honestly couldn't think of anyone better to take over the code.

We certainly don't see option 2 happening, as that would really be impossible.  Let's not forget, Sun's acquisition of MySQL did not go well.  So, the now rich original core team is out there... perhaps they might just be interested in picking up the pieces again.  In either case, we actually see a fairly healthy future for MySQL.  We just don't think Oracle will kill this highly popular daabase environment.

As long as it remains open source and "free" we're happy with either option 1 or option 3.