Our very favorite reaction to the Sun-MySQL acquisition came from industry pundit John Dvorak who calls it "perhaps the worst single event I have ever witnessed in the history of tech mergers and acquisitions." He says that given Sun's abominable track record with acquisitions and the fact that Sun can't afford to spend a billion dollars on a company with $60 million in revenue coupled the fact that MySQL is "the most competitive and biggest threat to Oracle," he's close to being convinced that Sun is acting as a "stooge" for Oracle, which wants it dead. The MySQL code can be resuscitated from a fork.

See what cutting costs can do. Sun nearly doubled its profits in the December quarter to $260 million, or 31 cents a share, better than thought, on flat revenues of $3.6 billion, up only 1.4%. Its margin was up 3.5 points to 48.5%. Server revenue was down 2.4% to $1.6 billion, but support and storage are looking cheerier, both up 4% to $1 billion and $655 million, respectively. Deferred revenues are up 24% to $2.7 billion. It forecasts sales growth in the low to mid-single digits with revenues up 5% this half.