Sun used to boast that it was one of the largest contributors to open source. That's being demonstrated now that Oracle has acquired the company. Oracle's acquisition of Sun, and subsequent layoffs, are having ripple effects on the open source community. The cuts are also hitting the GNOME accessibility (a11y) team and leading the project to think about the future of a11y efforts in GNOME.

From Washington, D.C., to Silicon Valley, senators and software industry CEOs are pressuring the European Union to make a decision on Oracle’s proposed buyout of Sun Microsystems and the MySQL open source database. Here’s the latest chatter, including a letter from JasperSoft CEO Brian Gentile to the EU.

"...This document provides a review and analysis of guidelines and articles relating to the needs of older people with Web accessibility needs due to ageing, and compares these with the needs of people with disabilities as already addressed in WAI guidelines. The focus is particularly on Europe but applies internationally as well.

Many open-source developers and business people are upset that Oracle is suing Google over Java patents in Android. These people have reason to worry. This case could change not just how they use Java but how open-source development is done at all. So why would Oracle, a Linux-supporter in its own right, introduce the evil of software patents into open-source programming?

We've been debating the merits of a possible IBM-Sun deal for a while now, and even Sun itself seemed to be in the dark as to if it would be a good idea to be bought by IBM. These debates are now all moot: in a suprise move (at least, I didn't see any speculation about it) ORacle has bought Sun Microsystems, at USD 9.50 a share, which equates to a total of 7.4 billion USD.

The GNOME Foundation is running an accessibility outreach program, offering USD$50,000 to be split among individuals. This program will promote software accessibility awareness among the GNOME community as well as harden and improve the overall quality of the GNOME accessibility offering.

Oracle and Sun Microsystems announced, Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems for $7.4B Deal with lot of major software products including Java and Solaris.

Most of you may already be aware of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems. It just dawned on me earlier yesterday: What will be the future of ZFS and Btrfs, seeing how Chris Mason, the lead developer to Btrfs works for Oracle?

European regulators have given Oracle the tentative green light in its long-delayed merger with Sun Microsystems now that Oracle has assuaged concerns about the stewardship of the open source MySQL database.