As a follow-up to my posting today, I noticed Dave Rosenberg at C|Net news published an article today on why Oracle's influence will likely be more quickly realizable than previously thought. He cites' an IDC report that underscores the importance of the Java platform as one of the primary motivators that drove the acquisition. Nothing new here, but what is significant here is the levity to which Oracle can use Java as spring board to is Fusion stack. Speaking from a Java ecosystem perspective, that may seem threatening but Oracle has the twin responsibility to make sure the platform continues to thrive without splitting. The net should be a general rising of the tide of the abilities of the platform without the benevolent hope of push more hardware to fund on-going R&D efforts.
As a participant in the Java community, I would encourage an open debate as to what projects are likely to be funded, and which are to let go to pasture. Java developers are used to a moderately open engagement, certainly more so than of the .NET Framework (not Microsoft developers are completely shut out!), and Oracle, and the Hava platform stands to gain from the apparent goodwill of the community – that is assuming the current honeymoon is not squandered early on.