Oracle buys BEA Systems for $8.5 Billion

Oracle Acquires BEA Systems for $8.5 Billion

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) and BEA Systems (NASDAQ: BEAS) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire all outstanding shares of BEA for $19.375 per share in cash. The offer is valued at approximately $8.5 billion, or $7.2 billion net of BEA's cash on hand of $1.3 billion. "We expect this deal to be accretive to Oracle's earnings by at least 1-2 cents on a non-GAAP basis in its first full year after closing," said Oracle President and Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz.

"The addition of BEA products and technology will significantly enhance and extend Oracle's Fusion middleware software suite," said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. "Oracle Fusion middleware has an open "hot-pluggable" architecture that allows customers the option of coupling BEA's WebLogic Java Server to virtually all the components of the Fusion software suite. That's just one example of how customers can choose among Oracle and BEA middleware products, knowing that those products will gracefully interoperate and be supported for years to come."

Full Story

Sun buys MySQL AB for $1 Billion

Sun Microsystems Announces Agreement to Acquire MySQL, Developer of the World's Most Popular Open

Sun Growth Strategy Accelerates With New Position in $15 Billion Database Market

SANTA CLARA, CA January 16, 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world's fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration. The acquisition accelerates Sun's position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market. Today's announcement reaffirms Sun's position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.

Full Story

Support the Free Software Foundation

Dear free software supporter,

At the 2007 annual Associate Members meeting held in March at MIT in Cambridge, the FSF board and staff gathered with members from around the world to discuss our activities and the tremendous successes we have had together in the past year. We fought Digital Restrictions Management through our DefectiveByDesign.org campaign, released version 3 of the GNU General Public License to help neutralize anti-free-software laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and defend against Microsoft's attempts to make free software proprietary through patent promises, released the GNU Affero GPL to support developers building network server software, supported fully free software distributions like gNewSense, backed high-priority software development projects like the free Flash player Gnash, and saw the continued success of our campaign to lift the "Java trap" with Sun's ongoing release of the Java platform under the GPL. Finally, following on from our discussion at the beginning of 2007 with major manufacturers and our release of the white paper, "Hardware Free From Restrictions," general-purpose computers are now available from major retailers with free software preloaded.

more...