Oracle and Sun: What it may mean for Open Source Landscape

Sharad Jain, Wednesday, April 22, 2009 @ 9:01 am

photo credit: Potato Benevolence

The recent acquisition of Sun by Oracle, and not IBM, took the community by surprise. Open source Java developers have benefited immensely from Sun's Java and IBM's contribution to Java space. IBM has a generally favorable view from open source community since IBM has few significant open-source contributions including those to Apache software foundation and Eclipse. When I heard about IBM's talk of acquiring Sun, I was certainly bothered by the demise of Sun as a company but nevertheless hoped that whatever happens, Java and MySQL, and the strong community behind it, should stay largely intact. And I felt comfortable with Java landing in IBM's lap considering its largest contribution to Java community by any corporate vendor. Oracle is a strong and focussed company but its contribution to open source world is minimal. As open source developer or company, you are also concerned about the fate of mysql. Like everybody, I am trying to make sense of what this will mean for the open source developers.

Why not IBM? And, more importantly, why Oracle?
Although talks between IBM and Sun dragged a bit, I felt certain that sooner or later, IBM would be Sun's choice. Why? because outside of Sun, IBM is the largest single company that has probably the largest stake in Java remaining successful. And Sun, for its part, will not give away the ownership of its crown-jewel, Java, to a company that is not committed to Java. IBM offered about $7B while Oracle acquired it for $7.4B. I strongly doubt this was the main reason. After all, Sun did open-source Java recently and Solaris not long ago. To me, Sun's concern over regulatory approval was a bigger reason. The impact that a failure of approval would have on future of Java and Solaris was probably unacceptable. Hence, they decided to go with safer alternative, Oracle.

Besides regulatory compliance, Sun may be thinking that Solaris is certainly dead in the hands of IBM. IBM already has a OS and hardware base that would conflict with Sun's offering. Whereas, Oracle may see value in preserving Sun's Solaris and hardware offering and bolstering its suite of offering. Oracle's press-release refers to the fact that they are planning to offer full application-to-disk suite of tools. Oracle's efforts with RedHat Linux based Unbreakable Linux haven't had tremendous success and there may be large market for Oracle Database on Solaris platform that is mature and proven.

What can open-source community and customers expect?
Just as Websphere, DB2 go together from IBM and .NET,  SQL-Server go together from Microsoft, Java/J2EE usually go with Oracle Database on Solaris or Linux. This is a preferred technology stack for quite a few large corporations (banks and financial institutions included). Oracle also has BEA Weblogic and will have not problem going with any other application servers like JBoss or Tomcat since its own Oracle Application Server isn't widely used anyway. There may be some benefits to such large corporations with the increased synergy between Java and Oracle and Solaris and Linux. However, Oracle's plan for application-to-disk sounds more like Microsoft's Vendor Lock-In strategy and needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

For small and mid-size companies it could be a different story. A large number of these either Java/J2EE and/or MySQL. Sun's Open Sourcing of Java is certainly going to help the community stay away from much of the impact. Prime contributors like Apache Software Foundation, Springsource and JBoss should be able to continue to innovate on Java front. The future of MySQL, a favorite not only for Java/J2EE but also LAMP and Ruby/Rails community, seems clouded now. Today's article from Wall Street Journal (WSJ) rightly raises the concern of small and mid-size companies that have been counting on mysql. Oracle does have a huge conflict-of-interest in perserving the status quo, and letting MySQL grow. Whether Oracle wants to admit it or not, mysql does represent a revenue forgone for its own database offering. Granted Oracle is much more powerful and featureful than MySQL, but if mysql can work for websites such as facebook and google, it should be good enough for lot of other websites.

For Oracle, it is best if it accepts that open source databases are here to stay. Killing or limiting MySQL growth will only alienate the community and lead them to look for alternatives, and they are a few (Postgresql etc.). Oracle should find a way to make it easier to migrate from MySQL to Oracle when they are ready (and companies do as they grow). Oracle may even decide to create goodwill in open-source community by letting MySQL, InnoDB combination grow. Oracle has thus far shown little interest in furthering open source community. With the acquisition of Java and MySQL, it has a great opportunity to please or to annoy open-source community. We can only hope that Oracle finds a way for both itself and open source to survive and grow peacefully.

Related posts:

1. Another Brain Fart on Why Open Source is Bad
2. Adobe “Open Screen” is not “Open Source”
3. FlashDevelop: Open Source Flash IDE
4. A Look at GWT Open Source
5. Tibco GI 3.2 Beta now Open Source

Comments (1)

Software Development

Comments: 1 so far

• Leave a comment
• Comment feed for this post
• TrackBack URL

1. 

   And what would be the future of MySQL?
   Here is another article:
   http://www.nearsoft.com/blog/Sun-Plus-Oracle-It-Coule-Be-a-Winner.html

   Comment by Victor, Thursday, April 23, 2009 @ 12:49 pm

Leave a comment