Ellison on the prolonged investigation of the European Commision

The European Commission’s prolonged investigation of Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun, which isn’t expected to finish much before the agency’s mid-January deadline, is costing Sun $100 million a month in revenues, according to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

Ellison, who was interviewed on-stage after a Churchill Club dinner Monday evening by former Sun president and COO Ed Zander of all people, told the crowd, “The longer this takes, the more money Sun is going to lose, and that’s not good for anybody. We want to get this done to save as many jobs as possible.”

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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."

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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.

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Wallpaper competition for KDE 4, now Open!

Wallpaper competition for KDE 4, now Open!

The Oxygen team has announced that they are running a contest to get a wide array of beautiful, usable and new wallpapers for inclusion in KDE 4.0. See website for submission details. Must be open source licensed and original content, with Photos preferred. Good luck!

Try your luck here!