From Sun's destruction, new ventures may bloom

The old Sun Microsystems is no more, as its stars flee Oracle's marketing-driven culture. Could that be good in the long run?

My fear that Oracle would buy Sun only to let it die are becoming reality. I can't help but envision the corpse of Sun lying inert while a cloven-hoofed Larry Ellison dances around it, cackling -- such a tragedy.

Obvious questions arise. The first is simple enough: What will happen to the billions of dollars of Sun hardware out in the world right now? From my own experience, the quality of tech support has plummeted. More important, Oracle doesn't seem to give a damn about retaining Sun's hardware and software engineers and visionaries, so the prognosis can't be good for the maintenance and development of Sun hardware product lines.

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When technologists like Adam Leventhal, Bryan Cantrill, Mike Shapiro, and Brendan Gregg are heading for the door, there's something horribly wrong. Attrition is a consequence of any acquisition, but these fellows have no overlap with their Oracle counterparts. They're the only ones of their kind, and they've now left a gaping hole in what used to be Sun Microsystems.

I've been an advocate of Sun hardware in the past, and I run and maintain several different Sun server and storage deployments to this day. But it's getting hard to rationalize the purchase of new Sun hardware, given the apathy displayed by Oracle toward that side of the business.

Worse, Oracle appears to be hacking out vital parts of Sun and throwing them away wholesale. It's getting rid of SunSolve and the Member Support Center and moving everything over to My Oracle Support. (Among other disasters associated with My Oracle Support, it apparently requires Adobe Flash, though other sections of the FAQ state there will be an HTML-only version as well. How about ditching Flash altogether?)

Also, for what it's worth, I've tried myriad ways to sign into the new support system with existing credentials. The FAQ states this is possible. Unfortunately for me, I get stuck in a circular terms-acceptance loop that I can't escape and that has apparently broken my access to the existing MSC. Brilliant!