A year ago I had such great hope for SUN(JAVA). But it looks like they lost another key founder of the MySQL product they recently bought. So it looks like SUN is just incompatible with success.
I have generally found that with most successful software projects there are just a few people who really drive the product along. When they leave or lose control the product typically gets driven from marketing meetings and thus driven into the ground. Often this is usually not instataneous as the Marketing people initially do sell more of the given product but the product, being rudderless, drifts onto the rough shores of the land of Suck and breaks apart.
So I expect Sun to release some charts that show how great they are doing with MySQL over the next few quarters but I also expect to see my geeky compatriots start to drift to the next great database. I wonder what that is?