Oracle + Sun: Good News or Bad News for Open Source?

Apr 22, 2009, 01:33 (0 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Glyn Mody)

[ Thanks to Glyn Moody for this link. ]

"The downside is that Oracle's feelings about open source – and hence its advocacy - are probably more ambiguous than Sun's. In particular, it seems to have very little truck with the more idealistic leanings of the free software side of things. Pragmatists might rejoice at that, but it does mean that Oracle will be aiming to use open source as a tool rather than see itself as an evangelist with a mission to convert.

"That can be seen from the press release, where the "two key Sun software assets" that are named are Java and Solaris.

"Java is relatively unproblematic, since Sun always managed it tightly, and Oracle will doubtless carry on in that vein. Thanks to Sun's decision to release it under the GNU GPL, people are pretty free to do with it as they wish. Oracle's backing should ensure that Java becomes even more important in enterprise settings -- and that could be a big boost for open source in quite an unexpected way."

Complete Story

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