Most insiders say it's a good thing...but then, many of them are responsible for negotiating it. What else would they say?

Gosling (Java's dad) says not to worry, they haven't sold their soul to the devil. While I may think Gosling is an absolute genius (hey, he got his bachelor's from my old school, after all), I also don't think he's a genius in the same way Balmer is a genius. There's pure, and then there's...well, less pure.

My opinion is that MS has bought Sun dinner, and is going to expect that Sun will put out before the evening is done. I hope Sun has a can of mace in its purse...

On the flip side, of course, is the fact that Sun is dying. It's bleeding worse than a bad guy in Kill Bill. Even post-deal, Sun is pink-slipping thousands of people. In a way then, it's kind of like a goodbye kiss from MS. But why bother? If Sun is in such danger of going bye-bye, why not just ignore it til it dies?

Well, MS is settling its outstanding suits like they're going out of style. Personally, I think Sun just became part of that process and the MS machine did what it does without much consideration either way. AND...when Sun goes down, maybe MS can count on whatever tiny amount of good-will the deal creates to help them cherry-pick the choisest leftovers. I don't know if there are many Sun products that MS would want, but I bet there are plenty of Sun brains that they'd love to dine on.

Where does this leave our beloved Java? My guess is that IBM would be very interested, but there's also been talk of having the entire Sun JDK go into open-source development mode. All I care about, personally, is that somehow, someway Java continues to grow, because if it doesn't it'll follow in Sun's footsteps.