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Oracle to buy JBoss (and others)

Posted by Zonk on from the offset-by-the-layoffs-i'm-sure dept.

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. "

13 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by cosmotron · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They lay people off to buy JBoss.

    --
    Ryan - http://www.thecosmotron.com/
    1. Re:Wow by millermp · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Did you even read why they laid off 2000 people? That was because of a merger with another company. They were duplicate jobs due to overlap of the merger with Siebel, not so they can save some money to buy JBoss.

  2. figures by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    being as guy running jboss was the former vice president of most of oracle's app server development team (bluestone/hp), this is kind of a funny and somewhat welcome suprise.

  3. Not gonna happen. by md17 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Since JBoss is private, Marc would have to be willing to sell JBoss to Larry. Larry can't just write a check, get regulatory approval and be done. There is no way Marc will sell his baby... I think he is much more interested in JBoss someday being bigger than IBM & Oracle. The world is moving toward software as a service. JBoss is positioned to be the king of that world. Marc knows this. 10 years down the road, no one will be paying for enterprise software licenses. Marc sees this and won't let even $400 million get in the way of JBoss being king of that world. I probably sound like a Marc loving lunatic. But we have to be honest. Marc created a virus that's exponentially eating away at Oracle, IBM, etc's business models. That virus can only be stopped if Marc sells. I've seen the smile on his face when he talks about the virus he created. By the time JBoss is public and purchasable by Larry, even Larry won't be able to afford it.

    (Reposted from my comment on Javalobby)

    1. Re:Not gonna happen. by catch23 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I really really hope JBoss does not sell themselves to Oracle. I've hated most of Oracle's java products and really hate to see JBoss turn into another horrible product. I for one, really enjoy developing on JBoss products.

      Doesn't Oracle already have an application server they bought long time ago? I thought they had bought the Orion server and turned it into their own. I used OrionServer back when it was actually good. The main software developers hung out in the #Java channel on efnet so it was really easy to stop by there and fire off a question or two. Nowadays, I'd have to pay $50,000 to Oracle just for some support help.

    2. Re:Not gonna happen. by Doctor+Memory · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not gonna happen. You know why? Because of Marc, Gavin King and their pet toad Bill Burke. When I think Weblogic, I think quality software. When I think of Websphere, I think Tomcat with a load of cruft bolted to every exposed surface. When I think of JBoss, I think arrogant poseurs with an app server. Face it, JBoss is more about the players than the product, and that's never going to cut it in the Real World. They've done remarkably well, but they're basically a fly buzzing around the real players. And, like a fly, if they ever become too annoying, they'll get swatted. Or maybe this is what Oracle is doing, setting out a pretty sundew plant...

      --
      Just junk food for thought...
  4. Oracle middleware sux by P3NIS_CLEAVER · · Score: 1, Interesting

    No not a troll. Anybody that has had to use any Oracle software other than the DBMS will tell you that it is garbage. Maybe they want to use open source software so they can sell complete solutions that actually work.

    --
    Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!

    http://financialpetition.org/
  5. AOL anyone? by MikeRT · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And we all remember the last time a company went out and bought up a bunch of companies trying to hack together a bigger brand and comprehensive product lineup, rather than take the time to properly acquire and integrate their product lines...

  6. Re:Don't trust Oracle by brennz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Killing off the leading product in a high growth market is bad business. It doesn't appear logical.

    I think people are misunderstanding the software subscription market too, and how vastly profitable it can be.

  7. The JBoss deal is about Hibernate... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ...more than it is about the App Server. It's interesting that with just one shot, Oracle will practically "own" EJB3 persistence.

    And I guess the JBoss guys (Fleury at the forefront) are more than happy to finally cash in, big time.

  8. is JBoss good to buy? by DeveloperAdvantage · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I am not sure why another company would want to buy JBoss.

    In its time it was very innovative with two things. First, making EJB type properties available to POJOs (properties like security, transactions, remoting). Second, they pioneered the business model of selling services based on a free product, which encouraged very wide-spread adoption. Both of these were controversial at the time and JBoss should be applauded for showing us the way.

    However, the problem is now many other companies do the same thing. Big application server companies give away free copies, at least for development teams. Java itself is moving toward making EJB type properties available to POJOs. On top of all this, over the last few years there has been a clear trend to move away from EJBs, favoring instead something like a Tomcat/Spring approach for J2EE applications, and, in other cases, the even lighter LAMP stack.

    It seems to me a few years ago JBoss would have been a great purchase, but right now I am not so sure.

    --
    FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
    1. Re:is JBoss good to buy? by AxelTorvalds · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I've been under the impression that jboss was looking for a suitor for a while now, since they've had a little bad blood with IBM. Either Oracle or HP, they want to cash in and there is nothing wrong with that.

      Featurewise, they are the best opensource app platform going. Now does Larry integrate Jboss, harmoniously, with Oracle? That I very much doubt. I've been wrong before, look at all the stuff Sun is doing, I still don't trust them but they actually did it and they are slowly earning my respect and Oracle to act similarly.

      From IBM's actions, it looks like they want to have a 2 prong strategy, you sell high dollar, industrial grade webspheres where you make a lot of jack and then you push geronimo and free stuff to the rest of the world so that they are building those types of applications in the first place. Oracle could be doing the same thing, Jboss is a damn fine entry grade product too, it can easily hang against many of the big boys.

  9. Re:OSS projects selling out? by iabervon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It seems to me like most OSS projects reach a state where almost all of the code is written by people employed to do so. This is because it becomes advantageous for businesses to make sure that the projects don't get abandoned, and developers who are doing it as a full-time job just spend more time writing code for the project than other people do. What probably matters more is whether everybody is employed by the same business. The ideal situation is something like Linux, where lots of companies which use Linux or make equipment that Linux could run on employ developers, or the original Apache, where the developers were employed in positions which would require using the software.