Man, when I was waiting all that time for Oracle to have its merger with Sun approved, I sort of was expecting exciting new things to emerge in the world of Java once it was all over. I can’t really say that Oracle has done much with Sun since the merger has completed, except fire a bunch of people and flip-flop for the worse on the TCK issue with the ASF. Today’s thrilling move from the owner of the Java trademark involves yet another chunk of Fusion middleware, which is probably exciting to somebody somewhere but frankly doesn’t do it for me. I guess now that IBM doesn’t own Java, Oracle can churn out its indistinguishable middleware offerings without being paranoid that Big Blue is going to try to screw them, but it sure isn’t taking Java in brave new directions. It just sort of sadly reaffirms for me the fact that the real energy in the Java ecosystem is elsewhere — which is unfortunate, because Oracle does have an important role to play that it simply isn’t playing.That being said, there is hope for the combined Sun-Oracle, because Rob Enderle thinks the combination is doomed! Enderle is probably most famous for his hilariously grim predictions about the future of Apple, which are generally the exact opposite of what ends up happening, so if he says Oracle-Sun is a sinking ship, expect great things from the company in short order. Technology Industry