Sun set

Alex Handy of the SD Times writes:

At 10:05 a.m. Pacific time today, Sun Microsystems' fate was sealed. At that exact moment, shareholder voting closed, and the motion to accept the acquisition offer from Oracle was approved. There was little fanfare. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's CEO, and Scott McNealy, its chairman, were both absent. Schwartz was said to be sick.

I'm not surprised: Who wouldn't be sick watching their company — especially an icon like Sun Microsystems — vote itself out of existence?

The fate of Sun's assets — the hardware, the Java language, Solaris, MySQL, and the rest — is uncertain. At the buying price of $9.50 a share, Oracle can afford to simply drop entire divisions that don't fit with their company strategy. We don't what Oracle plans to keep, but it certainly won't be everything. According to the SD Times article, analysts expect Oracle to lay off 1/3 of Sun's current workforce.

And that is why Schwartz isn't here, I believe. Because he genuinely loved Sun and its employees. And because he can't stand to look them in the eye knowing that most of them are about to lose their jobs.