Opinion: Oracle/Sun deal bad for free software ecosystem

by Jo Shields on 21 April 2009, 08:00

Tags: Sun Microsystems, Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL)

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The setting sun

In short, I think Oracle will un-open-source things which they can make a profit with, and jettison things they reckon they can't. If I had to pick, I reckon OpenSolaris and OpenOffice.org will get the chop - and MySQL will be left severely altered (although I'm not sure how).

I don't know whether the wider free software community has the manpower needed to keep all these projects alive without Sun engineers helping. And Sun's governance over these projects, especially requiring copyright assignment for OpenOffice.org development, makes me feel even more uneasy about what happens next.

Java's an interesting one, as Oracle have already got a lot of investment in Java - especially given its buyout of BEA last year. However, again, I reckon they'll un-GPL it, which will lead to a horrible situation where Oracle Java 7 and OpenJDK 6 go in different directions. This is one of the nasty side-effects of Sun's refusal over the years to have Java submitted to an international standards body,
which could help provide steering to prevent any such fracture.

SPARC will likely stay - an awful lot of Oracle installations end up on big-iron Sunfires. As long as they're still selling, Oracle will keep up the development. Solaris will go along with that need (it might even opt to offer support ONLY to users running Solaris or its own RHEL clone).

So that's my pessimistic outlook. I can't imagine Oracle keeping up with Sun's ‘Open Source Everything' approach, projects will be un-Opened, and the Free Software will need to fork them & pretty much run the show in competition. Boo!

 


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HEXUS Forums :: 3 Comments

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Posted by UnixNerd - Tue 21 Apr 2009 09:26
Whilst I agree that we have probably seen the last of OpenOffice as a free piece of software, Oracle would have to be quite insane to kill off OpenSolaris.

OpenSolaris has become one of Sun's primary test beds and development centres for features going into Solaris 10. It gives Sun access to a huge pool of free developers saving it's self millions in development costs in the process. A company as cash rich and savvy as Oracle is not going to throw that kind of free resource away. You can see how this is working for Sun by looking at the release notes for OpenSolaris and Solaris, Sun have continually cherry picked the best features from their open source OS and integrated them into Solaris once they are stable and debugged by the opensource comunity.
Posted by nichomach - Tue 21 Apr 2009 10:17
I actually doubt that OpenOffice will be killed off as free software - if only because the codebase is already GPL'ed, and its very existence hurts MS's revenue stream which in turn helps Oracle. I would expect a de-emphasis on development effort from within the merged organization, but that won't kill off OO. MySQL ought to be more of an issue, at least superficially, since it's a database server, but in practice Oracle (or SQL Server for that matter) offer a lot of features that MySQL doesn't. And anyway, if they kill off MySQL, it's not like people can't get a free database server elsewhere, and arguably a better one. I actually don't think Oracle want to un-open everything, if only because a lot of the free stuff gets used as enablers for flogging stuff that has a real price tag attached; the real story is that they now have complete control over a very powerful software and hardware stack that they can sell and support as a completely integrated solution.
Posted by nichomach - Fri 24 Apr 2009 08:58
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/23/oracle_sun_town_hall/

There were greater re-assurances on Java and MySQL. There's a huge question mark hanging over what Oracle will do with Java, given that Sun tries to lead the Java community, its name is on so many Java specs, and the fact that it open sourced Java.

Phillips called Sun's work on embedded Java “exciting” while Screven pointed to the fact that Java middleware is the fastest growing part of Oracle's business.

Screven dismissed the idea Oracle would close source Java, noting its openness would help further Oracle's middleware business. “It would be pretty crazy of us to turn Java into some sort of private, hidden technology. A lot of the appeal of Java is it's open. The fact it's open makes our middleware more appealing…It would be pretty wacky to try and close that off,” Screven said.

On MySQL, concerns span whether Oracle will kill the product, stop development, or close off the community. Phillips said MySQL has reach in “incremental markets” such as start-ups that Oracle can't get to on its own. And citing PeopleSoft, Phillips said Oracle has a track record of improving the technology and level of support of products it has purchased.

“We need that reach and want them learning SQL early. The number of customers we have that started on other databases and migrated over time for reasons of their own, that's good for us. We need to get them to learn that product and SQL…people experiment with a variety of things and I that's a good thing,” Phillips said.

“We have a track record of saying we know what to do. We are not going to kill off any product. It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars and start killing off products. We want to let as many survive as possible,” he said.

I has a win…maybe :).