Oracle and Open Source
June 30, 2010
We have a new advertiser, the Lucene Revolution Conference. I have been paying more attention to open source search because it is becoming an option for some of the organizations with whom I speak. I read an interesting article with a snappy title: “Has Oracle Been a Disaster for Sun’s Open Source?” Oracle has become a player in open source. The company has MySQL, Java, and other properties. Oracle is a publicly traded company, and I am not surprised that open source may not be getting the attention the open source community wants to see. For me, the most interesting comment in the write up was:
It would probably be unfair to characterize Oracle’s running of Sun’s open source projects as a disaster – at least, for the moment; but as the above shows, there are plenty of grounds for concern, both in terms of how the code is being developed, and the happiness or otherwise of developers and users. Whether buying Sun will prove to be a smart move in the long term depends critically on how smartly Larry Ellison and his managers can address these issues. They also need to start to think more seriously about how Oracle can contribute to Sun’s open source products, and not just the other way around.
My view is that some companies – maybe even Oracle?—might be squeezing whatever marketing and sales value it can from its open source properties. The commercial imperative can be quite different from other organizations’ and developers’ motives. I have come across some instances of commercial outfits using “open source” as a marketing angle. A lousy economy can create some difficult situations when good intent collides with making money.
Stephen E Arnold, June 30, 2010
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