As a big fan of NetBeans, I was really happy to hear that IBM called off their plans to acquire Sun Microsystems. With IBM in control of Eclipse (enemy #1 for NetBeans), I knew the future would be dim for my favorite IDE. Even though NetBeans is Open Source, Sun has been actively funding the project for years. IBM wouldn't likely not have the same priority.

I've never really had the the urge to use Eclipse. Lots of my collegues are devoted Eclispe users, but I've always enjoyed the NetBeans feature set, I know my way around the nooks and crannies of the NetBeans website to find what I need, and I kind of enjoy the workplace banter that goes with an old fashioned rivalry.

I've also spent a great deal of time building Free Form NetBeans projects for many of my Java projects at work. I love the fact that I can use the same Ant build scripts we use to on the build server to manage products inside the IDE. It helps enforce the procedures and conventions for all developers that work on the same project. And with the NetBeans projects checked into the source control system, it's remarkebly easy to pull a fresh sandbox and get to work without any IDE configuration (something my Eclipse using peers haven't been able to pull off so easily).

So now I'm a little more optimistic about the future of NetBeans now that Oracle is taking over. Sure they have own IDE called JDeveloper, but it's far less popular than NetBeans or Eclipse. I can't claim to be in tune with the world of JDeveloper users, but I think its main selling point is its integration with the Oracle product stack. So if you're coding applications in an Oracle shop, JDeveloper might be the best choice.

So I expect some convergence between NetBeans and JDeveloper, but I think NetBeans is the stronger product and will likely dominate in the end.

MySQL on the other hand may be a different story...