Oracle Wants Proof That Open Source Is Profitable

An anonymous reader writes "Since Oracle's acquisition of Sun, all open source projects that now have Oracle as their primary sponsor are worried about their future, and FUD is spreading quickly. Very few public statements have been made by Oracle executives, particularly regarding OpenSolaris. The community is arguing about the difficulties of forking the code base when most (if not all) of the developers are employed by Oracle. Now Oracle wants the community to prove that open source can be made profitable. What arguments can the Slashdot crowd provide to convince Oracle about that?" Reader greg1104 tips related news about licenses for Solaris. According to an account manager, "Solaris support now comes through a contract on the hardware (Oracle SUN hardware)."

Comments

Re:Am I the only one....

[Anita Coney]

I realize it's difficult to understand human behavior when you lack any sense of humor. You must lead a sad and pathetic life. But you're probably not even aware of that, are you?

Re:Principles

[DaveV1.0]

But, by believing open source is a good model, you have indicated that you are not actually willing to buy software.

Hey Oracle, want the secret?

[stickfigure]

FUCK YOU!

Shhh... don't tell or there will be less for us.

Luv ya,

stick

Re:Enabler

[BitZtream]

That's how Linux works, why not OpenSolaris?

And you don't see the pattern yet, do you? Stop trying to use Linux as the perfect reference model. Its not, its shitty, why? Because everyone else just about does better. Its the best OSS contender, sure ... but its still not much of a contender and its beat the fuck down by closed source pretty much everywhere except cheap ass server farms.

Umm, you don't have to pay software licensing costs, you get bug reporting and work on the project from others for free, you can charge people support fees if they want you to do any work on it, if they don't want support it costs you nothing. How is this not a win?

Just for reference, the same thing happens with closed source software too, AND they get licensing costs. THAT is a win for them.

Oracle gets the bug reports and a lot of times fixes from customers for free already, that carrot isn't going to move the horse and its a really shitty argument. People will report bugs for closed source software beaver, just for reference, there were bugs and bug reports before the OSS movement was a stain in mommies drawers, so lets not try and pretend that its something unique or new.

Close source OpenSolaris and try to get people to pay you when they can just use Linux instead (or Windows or OS X)?

Except they'd go use FreeBSD instead, since its actually got the features that people want from OpenSolaris rather than a license that prevents it from including other projects. Linux isn't an option for Solaris users, try again.

Before Solaris got to the point that it went open, I would have taken it over Linux without the blink of an eye. By the time it had got to the point of being 'OSS' I had long since migrated to not so shitty OSes. The reason Solaris was opened is because Sun was fully aware they had lost the OS battle because they sat on their ass for several years and jerked off to Java rather than putting effort into what they were good at.

They spent too much time competing to beat Microsoft down anyway they could and lost. Its roughly the same thing as the cold war. MS being the US, Sun being Russia.

MS and the US are far better bullshitters and both managed to run the other into financial ruin from competition.