The Wall Street Journal and others reported Wednesday morning that as much as US$6.5 billion in cash for Sun. It's a potential acquisition that has long been speculated on with much fervor. And it's a merger that could affect the likes of , Linux, cloud computing, open source and MySQL. That means one potential sale reaches out and pushes a whole lot of hot buttons for a whole lot of techies.

And many of them rushed to tweet about everything from their concerns for employees at both IBM and Sun to what a merger might mean for Java , how it could affect their stocks, and how this could touch Hewlett-Packard.

"So if IBM buys Sun, does that just leave HP and IBM to fight it out in the hardware and services business? DoJ?," tweeted prkush. And DebJenz noted, "IBM buying Sun?? Talk about Goliath and Goliath!"

Nearyd tweeted, "Wow! My Sun shares are up 80% on the day, which means that they're now "only" down 60% year on year."

perfect medium for anyone who wants to get a feel for a wide range of gut reactions to, well, most anything, including a potential merger, according to Ken Hyers, a senior analyst with Technology Business Research.