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Oracle to buy JBoss (and others)
tfritsch writes "According to a story at News.com it looks like Oracle's shopping spree is to continue. The JBoss acquisition could be big - what does it mean for the future of the JBoss Application Server?" From the article: "Oracle makes the majority of its revenue from its database and applications business. And it has its own line of Java middleware, which competes with JBoss' software, and a set of Java developer tools. However, Oracle has been warming up to open-source products, including Zend's PHP development tools, over the past year because its corporate customers are increasingly using open source software, according to company executives. "
Oracle is a quite good company producing quality database applications.
The problem with them? They don't give a rat's ass about security. 600+, 800+ days of unfixed exploits? Who cares! Their security track record is much worse than that of Microsoft's.
The people who fork out a lot of cash to Oracle could rightfully demand that they receive quick fixes for these things.
Oracle teaming with PHP? The worst security nightmare ever. PHP is absolutely craptastic from a security viewpoint (insecure default configuration, etc.), for example the mail() function makes it the favorite of spammers, because you can use it to spam a lot with it - because the mail() function's broken implementation allows spammers to send out mail in the thousands. Working around it is possible, but cumbersome - 99% of the people using the function doesn't even know about the issue, so its a spam-haven.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Am I now going to have to start assuming that any decent OSS/FS project will eventually sell out?
Maybe this is just the way of business, who knows. People do want to make money, even from their labors of love. But the question I pose is simple: can't the "sell-out" software simply fork at the point of the acquisition? It's not like you can put open source software back in the can. All you can do is restrict it going forward.
Let's take JBoss as an example. What's to prevent JBoss developers (or anyone) from coming out with "JHoncho" based on the pre-Oracle version of JBoss and fork from that point? Oracle ends up buying the JBoss name and not much more, unless the developers want to work for them.
That's more or less true. At Oracle, we were told that if it could be written out, automated and formulated it would be sent overseas. This is before the big merges started to actually come together. Now, not only do you have to worry about your job being redundant which is a contributing factor, you have to also hope that it requires your presense in the states. On the bright side, those getting let go of right now should have an easier time finding a job in the current climate then those a couple years back.
Apache Geronimo
Take a look at the latest numbers. Last year JBoss was ahead by a fraction of a point. This year websphere is ahead by