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Oracle Embraces Mozilla
kiggs writes "According to this article from eWeek, Oracle Corp. is ready to extend its 'Linux Everywhere' campaign to client systems. At next week's LinuxWorld in New York, Oracle will announce that it will enable the Mozilla open-source Web browser to run Oracle applications in the coming year.
Dave Dargo, vice president of Oracle's Linux Program Office and the Performance Engineering team within its Platform Technologies Division, says that Oracle will look to expand its 1.5-year-old Linux support program by supporting Linux not just as a server but as a client."
I trust Oracle about as much as I trust Microsoft. Let's hope they don't set their sights on acquisition, because their algorithm goes "embrace-acquire-mediocrify-priceincrease"
Will this have any impact on Firebird, which is the sweetest browser I ever did use?
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
The fact that Jinitiator (Oracle's JVM) has only worked for windows has been the last reason my company hasn't been able to switch to linux.
All of our Novell stuff now has Linux ports, and OpenOffice suits most of us just fine. Hopefully this is the last piece of the puzzle.
It would also be really cool if the apps could run through LTSP.
The article doesn't specifically name a Linux Jinitiator, but I would be more than happy if they got the apps to run using a more recent Sun JVM for Mozilla.
"If they have both, tell them we use Linux. And if they have that, tell them the computers are down." -Dave Chapelle
To each his own, but the only thing I use IE for is to check for windows updates
When I try using Windows Update with Mozilla, it asks me if I want to download IE. Of course, they argue that IE is integrated into the OS, so this makes no sense.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
There's actually a shred of wisdom in the poster's wit. If it weren't for a single company dominating PC software, there would be a lot less motivation to find an open source alternatives. Without Microsoft, the choice was (and probably still would be) between several crappy closed source software venders. It is because of MS's predatory and evil ways the Linux has become the alternative of choice. And maybe Bill will drown in all that free beer!
This is an extremely smart move on Oracles behalf, imho.
One would think that moving to service orientation would be the way to go, with OSS critical mass just around the corner.
But this proves that Oracle is thinking further, where OSes are only a commodity and clients networking capabilites count.
By extending Mozilla with their stuff they're adding a feature to Oracle that others don't have (yet), despite the fact that Oracle DB probably has had these features for years. Clients for free, server service capable software for good ol' cash. This move will do two things for Oracle: It will establish their image as early adapters and full supporters of OSS *and* it will let them maintain their standard business model a little longer: selling bizarely priced DBs and other software stuff.
Very smart indeed.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Oracle Applications use a custom Java framework they call J-Initiator. This is Windows only at the time.
I find it funny that Oracle is now supporting Linux instead of just saying they support it, in fact now Red Hat Advanced server on Dell hardware is their platform of choice. Less than a year ago they were not even maintaining most of their Linux products.
the difference between an application using 100% of the capability of the existing web standards, and 100% of the capability thats available in IE6, in particular, is enormous.
Yes - the one using web standards will look better and be more powerful.
I suggest you read up on higher-level DOM and CSS standards. IE only supports about 5% of what the standards specify, which is why you think the standards suck. But there is nothing - nothing - that you can do with IE6's proprietary extensions, that you can not do using 100% standard XHTML/CSS.
Precisely. Oracle is going to write their applications so that they take advantage of the rich client opportunities that XUL provides. They are going to use Mozilla as a platform in much the same way that the Komodo IDE is based on Mozilla. XUL allows developers to do much more than they could with just HTML.
This is a great opportunity to show what Mozilla is truly capable of. In may ways Mozilla offers today what Microsoft is only planning to release with Longhorn. Not to mention the fact that Mozilla is Free Software and platform independent. It's made to order for developing and releasing rich client applications on a wide variety of platforms.