This morning’s keynote at day 1 of JavaOne 2009 had an interesting surprise – Scott McNealy came on stage and introduced the new owner of Sun Microsystems, Larry Ellison. I think this was the first time that Ellison had appeared in public to discuss the Oracle buy out of Sun. It was an interesting dynamic on the stage. Scott led up to the introduction of Ellison with a number of jokes about advertising Java on the America’s Cup yacht etc, so it was pretty light hearted, but there was some awkward moments where it was obvious seeing the two side by side – Ellison was full of energy and enthusiasm like a young boy with a new toy, and McNealy seems somewhat down and reserved… as I think you would be if you were talking to the person who had just swooped in and bought out the company you co-founded.
Ellison was surprisingly enthusiastic about JavaFX, and made comments that he’d like to see the Sun Open Office team continue and enhance Open Office using JavaFX – both surprising statements since Open Office and JavaFX were suggested by some to be high on the list of products/technologies that Oracle may ditch.
It was an interesting point in history where Sun Microsystems as we know it comes to an end, and Java continues into the future under the new stewardship of Oracle.