“The open-source community may be in for a jolt. Oracle is
plotting what could be the biggest endorsement yet by a mainstream
software company for a movement that involves legions of developers
across the globe who publish ‘open’ software distributed freely
over the Net, making money instead from support and maintenance.
It’s a bold bet for a company that gets a healthy chunk of its $16
billion in annual sales from multimillion-dollar software packages
deals, but Oracle is ready to spend big on open source.“Oracle is in talks to buy at least three open-source software
companies in deals that could be valued at more than $600 million,
BusinessWeek Online has learned…”