It's impossible to say. Sun/Oracle haven't said anything about what they actually plan to do, and won't till the summer.

As a developer it really depends if Oracle keeps the existing product line in place or if they decide to squish it and mold it into an "upsell" stream like IBM does with their open source offerings; you mean you want MySQL without paying us anything? Why don't you use the wonderful DB2 express first, develop your entire application then when you want to switch off it's cheaper to purchase from us than switch?

I agree, this all depends on what Oracle decides to do.

I am guessing that the another Flash competitive tech, JavaFX from SUN will die soon B/C Oracle might not much care for Rich Media solution. Sun will just focus on server application and data base solution with pure Java platform to support Oracle's demand.

And indeed, I think processing tech based on Java Applet of SUN, another Flash killer, also will loose attraction.
http://processing.org/

Just when I was getting up to speed with MySQL, this comes along. However, even if Oracle wanted to kill MySQL (which many people say wouldn't happen since the open-source database server attends well a market that Oracle's offerings don't), most of the code that I'm developing could be reapplied to another competitor down the road. So to answer the question, I will still work with MySQL.

@Tomas: You miss the point - Oracle *cant* kill MySQL because it's source is open :-)

@Tom, that is true, however Oracle could change the licensing agreement which although it would still be open source could kill the product by adding licensing restrictions or fees. Remember that sometimes Open Source != Free for all use cases

I think that Oracle buying Sun is a bad news for Java lovers. Java is a great platform because the APIs are the same no mater what is the plateform. This is due to Sun's control over the language and apis. Oracle will probably not keep the same level of control and many companies will produce different JDKs all a bit different from each other. This mean that a software that runs un a given JDK will not run on another JDK from a different vendor.

It will be the end of the Java platform.

Two areas of concern would be the direction that the Java platform takes (especially in terms of the process around JSRs , JDKs, etc) and MySQL.

I personally feel that Oracle would not upset things too much in the current climate. They actually have a lot of work to do on their side (I mean Server side) with Sun, BEA and their offerings.

It would be interesting to note how IBM will eventually respond to whatever direction Oracle takes, maybe in the next year or so. That could really affect Java's direction.

Regarding MySQL... I'm cautious! Will continue to use MySQL for the foreseeable future.

I seriously doubt the future of Java is any bleaker because of this purchase. Java is HUGE and much kudos will come with owning it. A large number of Oracle's own customers use it in one way or another and there are opportunities for clever minds at Oracle.

My feeling is that this will be a very good thing for Java and exactly what JavaFX needed. Web RIA is the future of computing. No company *in their right mind* would pass up the opportunity to have a significant role in shaping and being part of that future.

All in all, this is a good thing in my opinion, with reservations over the future of MySQL.