Sun shareholders give their blessing to Oracle takeover

The path to the Oracle takeover of Sun Microsystems is nearly clear. On Thursday, during a special meeting at the companies headquarters in Santa Clara, California, Sun shareholders approved Oracle's offer. The only remaining obstacle to the planned takeover of the server, Unix and Java specialist is approval from the US Department of Justice.

Sun has been losing money for some time, a trend it continued in the second quarter of this year. The company's difficult financial situation forced it to look for a buyer. With IBM demurring due to the high price, in April Oracle launched a surprise bid worth $7.4 billion including debts.

The takeover has caused some concern in the IT community, particularly over the question of whether Oracle will remain on Sun's recently charted course towards an open source future and what will happen to development of Sun's server hardware. Both companies have repeatedly attempted to dispel these concerns. Sun presented Oracle boss Larry Ellison as the "next leader of the Java community" and, in turn, he has promised to increase investment in Java technology, following the takeover.

See also:

• Oracle buys virtualisation specialists Virtual Iron, a report from The H.
• Sun shareholders sue over the Oracle acquisition, a report from The H.
• MySQL founder and ex-CEO react to Oracle/Sun, a report from The H.
• With Oracle buying Sun what will become of Java, MySQL and OpenOffice?, a feature from The H.
• Oracle buys Sun, a report from The H.

(crve)