The ZFS filesystem which was being used by developers at Apple for a possible future update to the Snow Leopard OS or future OS X systems has been stopped indefinitely according to an official statement by MacOS Forge.

The statement couldn’t be anymore clear:

The ZFS project has been discontinued. The mailing list and repository will also be removed shortly.

While many rumors about the reasons for the work stop have surfaced, there’s speculation that the purchase of Sun by Oracle added to those issues. Oracle owns their own filesystem (BTRFS) which is still under development and which would have competed against the ZFS system. While ZFS has also faced patent issues that could have potentially led to lawsuits and other development issues down the road. [AppleInsider]

ZFS File System Development For Future Snow Leopard OS Update “Discontinued” is a post from: The Inquisitr

Oracle’s Sun Acquisition

Oracle will pay about $7.1 billion for Sun. That comes out to $9.50 a share — more than IBM’s $9.40 a share offer last month. Altogether, the transaction is valued at $5.6 billion, taking into account various debts. Sun’s board has given unanimous approval for the deal. It still requires a shareholder sign-off, however, as well as regulatory approval to go through.

Oracle and Sun have been partners for more than 20 years, with Oracle’s Fusion Middleware being built on Sun’s Java protocol and its database business using Sun’s Solaris operating system.

Oracle execs believe the deal will add a minimum of 15 cents a share to the company’s earnings, a projected gain of $1.5 billion in the first year. Already, Sun’s shares were up 36 percent in premarket trading. Oracle’s shares dropped 4.5 percent, while IBM went down by only about 1 percent.

Oracle-Sun Acquisition Analysis

The following Bloomberg video features more analysis on the Oracle-Sun acquisition and what it could mean for the market.

Sorry, IBM: Oracle Buys Sun Microsystems is a post from: The Inquisitr

IBM Sun Takeover

If an IBM-Sun takeover happens, it could come at a price of $6.5 billion, the unnamed insiders are quoted as saying. That’d be a massive premium over Sun’s $4.97-a-share closing price Tuesday evening.

IBM may not be the only company in the runnings, though: Sun is said to have informally chatted with numerous other companies about a possible purchase.

Adding credit to the idea is a separate report in The New York Times today, citing another source as saying a near-$7 billion IBM-Sun deal is on the way. The merger, The Times also points out, could face an antitrust challenge before its completion.

IBM currently has roughly double the annual research and development budget as Sun. Sun has approximately 1 million software developers writing applications on its platforms, compared to IBM’s stated 8 million. Sun also owns MySQL, an open source business for which it paid $1 billion back in 2008.

Sun has been financially unsound for some time, though. An IBM takeover would mark the largest-ever deal pulled off by International Business Machines.

Report: IBM Looking to Acquire Sun Microsystems is a post from: The Inquisitr