3 more open source firms should be preparing to be aquired by the Oracle in the nearest future, when believing this article at the business week. After aquiring the InnoDB, now its “Zend Time” as it seems. It would make enough sense, from the business point of view – securing all alternative to microsoft development, positions. As recently Borland has announced that after disappointing year results, they are going to sell , maybe it is a good time, to buy them, before some other “sharks” would do that ? I strongly believe, that “saving” the Borland is much more important, then securing Sleepycat Software deal, though i understand that these deals have different dimensions.
For me, as a developer, seeing such firm as a Borland, being bought by Microsoft would be the worse nightmare in years. Yes, i know that Borland is not an open source, and that recently it was not so successful, but behind this name, there are great web developer communities (for some time i was making part some of them), and no doubt, that if some of the product would be fixed, then the number of the developers would greatly increase. It would give the market one more chance, and a bit more of concurrence, cause the principal idea of the delphi and the kylix is absolutely great.