From WAZI: What Does Oracle’s Buyout of Sun Mean to Open Source?

Oracle's Buying Sun: What This Means to Open Source

http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/1-3/decocketal/FTads/FT011/FT11.htm

Why should you care?

Sun has been responsible for the single largest corporate investment in open source software to date.

http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=27255

Sun's actively funded and well supported OSS projects are at the core of the community. http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/learnmore.jsp

A short list, seriously:

• GlassFish
• GNOME
• Grid Engine
• JavaDB
• java.net
• Jini Network Technology
• JXTA Technology
• Linux
• Mobile & Embedded

• Mozilla
• MySQL
• NetBeans
• OpenDS
• Open ESB
• OpenJDK
• OpenCDS
• Open Media Commons
• Open MPI

• Open HA Cluster
• OpenPrinting
• OpenPTK
• OpenOffice.org
• OpenSPARC
• OpenSSO
• OpenSolaris
• OpenxVM
• Portal

• PostgreSQL
• Project Darkstar
• Project Fortress
• Project LookingGlass
• Project Woodstock
• Roller
• VirtualBox
• X.Org

The players
Sun Microsystems 
Sun has been an advocate and champion of open innovation driving networked computing. Their recent direction seems to clarify who they are . . .

• Green Computing - http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/environment/products/intro.jsp
  
• Open Source Software - of course
  
• Security - http://www.sun.com/security/
  
• Open Standards - http://www.sun.com/software/standards/
  
• Open Storage - http://www.sun.com/storage/openstorage
  

Let's not forget . . .

• The network is the computer
• The dot in dot com http://www.denounce.com/dotcom.html
• Java
  

Oracle 

The business of Oracle is built around proprietary software licensing. It is a company not known for its sponsorship of the open source community. Oracle is more focused on very tactical investments in open source. http://oss.oracle.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Corporation

The details

There has been a lot of commotion around Oracle's recent bid on Sun Microsystems. Oracle is in the process of purchasing Sun for $7.4 billion, which includes Sun's $1.8 billion in debt. With this acquisition Oracle will be purchasing Java, Solaris, a bunch of hardware and virtualization tools, which will all synergize with Oracle's current state to provide a projected increase of $1.5 billion in revenue in the first year and over $2 billion in the second year. 

But let’s put business aside for a second. The proprietary software and increase revenues aside, what will happen to all of the open source components of Sun, especially MySQL which is a competitor with the Oracle database?

Please read the rest at WAZI . . .

Full Story at Wazi

Attribution 

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

http://olex.openlogic.com/wazi/attributions-licensing/

About Airius

Airius is a specialized research consultancy, focusing in solutions, strategy and analytics around the use of open source software for business and government. Contact Airius at info@airius.com.

References:

http://ab-at-sun.blogspot.com/2008/01/sun-is-largest-enterprise-contributor.html

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=16598

http://gigaom.com/2009/04/20/oracle-to-buy-sun-for-74-billion/

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2903

http://marketing.openoffice.org/planet/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10223090-16.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=TheOpenRoad

http://lmaugustin.typepad.com/lma/2009/04/oracle-buys-java-and-mysql-for-free.html

http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/opensource/oracle-open-source-faq.html