This is my last column in the pages of Daze, dear readers. The natural inclination for someone in my position is to take the entire space reminiscing and thanking people; I will certainly get to that. However, some big news broke in the tech world last week, with the announcement that database colossus Oracle would purchase Sun Microsystems in a mammoth $7.4 billion deal. This is an earth-shaking event, but for some reason it has not gotten the coverage that I believe it deserves.

All who have taken an introductory computer science course at Cornell will know Sun as the creators of the open-source Java programming language. Java is the language of choice for instruction in the University’s two main intro CS courses, CS 1110 and CS 2110, and is widely used beyond the hill in countless software applications. The main appeal of Java for real-world software developers is that applications programmed in the language can run with very few modifications on many different platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X and various flavors of Linux.

Now, Java is not going anywhere as a result of this deal. Oracle has been somewhat involved in Java-related products before the deal, providing some incentive for them to continue Sun’s prominent backing of the language. Also, even if Oracle decided to withdraw their support of Java, third parties would likely swoop in and fill the void to a large degree. Indeed, given that Java is largely available under an open source license, there are already some third-party implementations available. In theory, these would be completely unaffected by any move that Oracle decides to make with the language.

The area of main concern is MySQL, an open-source database product that Sun acquired last year in another billion-dollar deal. MySQL is used very widely around the Internet as the back-end for numerous websites, and is regarded as a relatively good, free alternative to Oracle’s own pricey and proprietary database offerings. Now that Oracle effectively owns MySQL, the future of this important project becomes much more murky.

Here, again, MySQL’s open-source nature will protect it. Even if Oracle decided to pull support for the free version of MySQL, the entire source code of the product is available to many other third parties with a vested interest in continuing its development. So, although its form and name may change, MySQL should continue to live on well past the completion of this merger.

This whole story should serve as a boon for proponents of open source software; developers who have built on Java and MySQL will be protected by their open source licenses regardless of what may come. If these products had been proprietary, then there would be a lot more developers scrambling for cover right now; thankfully there are not, and all should keep this in mind the next time a development opportunity rolls around.

AUTHOR’S NOTE — As I said earlier, due to my impending graduation, this will be the final edition of Optimized Queries. I would like to sincerely thank all of my editors over the past 19 months for the opportunity to write in Eclipse and now Daze. Most of all, though, I thank all of you out there for your readership and support. Keep on computing!