[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

And what about JAVA?

And Open Office.?

[NVDave]

Java and OpenOffice are the reasons to acquire Sun long-term.

Short-term, Sun’s hardware is what is responsible for Oracle being a world-class RMBMS - and to protect their market, Oracle has to make sure that the hardware of Sun isn’t bought up by some competitor, like IBM, who would and could buy Sun purely for the Java and OpenOffice assets.

With work (a lot of work), Linux or one of the “free” Unix implementations could become the equal of Solaris, but that’s years and years into the future.