Oracle's $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems means a new home for Java, and Java is doing just fine.

Indeed, if Sun could not remain independent and IBM dropped its bid for the system maker, the next best place for Java to land was Oracle.

Oracle is no stranger to Java and Java developers, and not only because of its Java-based middleware stack. Oracle has long supported Java with tools for developers and support in several industry attempts to advance Java and open technologies, such as Eclipse and other efforts that were not as successful. However, Oracle has done with Java what the company has always done best—gone its own way.

As industry observer Tony Baer said:

Now that it "owns" the origins of the Java stack, we expect Oracle to provide counterweight to IBM/Eclipse, but as mentioned earlier, it will be one [born] of nuance rather than religion. You can see it already in Oracle's bifurcated Eclipse strategy, where its core development platform, JDeveloper, is not Eclipse-compliant, but the recently acquired BEA stack is. In some areas, such as Java persistence, Oracle has taken lead billing. Anyway, as Eclipse has spread from developer to run time platform, why would Oracle give up its position as a member of Eclipse's board.