If Oracle Bought Every Open Source Company

An anonymous reader points out Glyn Moody's thought experiment: what if Oracle bought up the entire open source ecosystem? Who would win, who would lose? And how might an open ecosystem grow in the wake of such an event? "Recently, there was an interesting rumour circulating that Oracle had a war chest of some $70 billion, and was going on an acquisition spree. Despite the huge figure, it had a certain plausibility, because Oracle is a highly successful company with deep pockets and an aggressive management. The rumour was soon denied, but suppose Oracle decided to spend, if not $70 billion, say $10 billion in an efficient way: how might it do that? One rather dramatic use of that money would be to buy up the leading open source companies — all of them."

Comments

Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[Gordonjcp]

Hello Oracle, come and buy my company.

Some areas would have no interest

[ducomputergeek]

Somehow I doubt they'd be buying up projects like Drupal, Wordpress, or Joomla. But I could see them buying up companies like Jaspersoft, Openbravo, etc. that produce enterprise grade OSS tools used for BI, ERP, etc. which does fit nicely into their business market. Although seeing Oracle in action in the past, it would likely be that they would buy then slowly let the products wither and die to they are no longer a threat to their core business.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[IMightB]

The problem with that is since they are Open Source, the project forks and continues on Business as Usual. Look at MySQL for an example. Even if the codebase officially known as MySQL withers on the vine, there's still at least 2 forks I can think of that are viable.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[Surt]

Yeah, to really kill open source, you have to buy up the key developers and put them on non-compete contracts. It would probably even be a cheaper strategy. 10 billion could pay 60 thousand salaries for a year ... if they actually have 70 billion they could make a pretty significant dent in open source, particularly if they target only people developing stuff that competes with them in any way.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[Jane Q. Public]

And even that's a problem: non-compete clauses are generally unenforceable in California, and other states, seeing how successful that has been, have been considering following their lead in that regard. Further, it is very questionable whether a non-compete clause agreed to in one state is enforceable in another state.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[Surt]

Yeah, noncompete was an unfortunate choice of words ... I actually meant an exclusivity contract, which is entirely enforceable since it doesn't incur the wrath of any of the right-to-work laws.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[Sparr0]

Wrong kind of non-compete. You don't forbid them from doing stuff later, you just make their non-competition a requirement for getting paid this month.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[Kjella]

The problem with that is since they are Open Source, the project forks and continues on Business as Usual. Look at MySQL for an example. Even if the codebase officially known as MySQL withers on the vine, there's still at least 2 forks I can think of that are viable.

So in the same sentence you manage to say it's fractured into several forks yet at the same time it's business as usual? One of the things businesses look for when they invest in a product is long term viability. Branches forming and withering, names changing, support greatly varying, all of that effectively stops much of the corporate adoption. It's not about killing something forever, if you can throw enough shoes in the machinery then you win long enough to turn a good profit. Just look at Microsoft and Java, all they did to stifle Java more than paid off even though Java still lives on. You can't make it go away but you certainly can slow it down.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[Alex Belits]

Aren't you supposed to tell us that GIMP does not support CMYK? I thought, Microsoft doesn't pay those who don't include dissing GIMP and OpenOffice into every comment, or at least proclaim their love for Linux before spewing their anti-open-source propaganda.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[AHuxley]

Yes you would have to "BP" the brains with NDA like deals, all of them.
Work for us on project x, no other projects in the same areas.
No talking to the press for the life of the project.
Anyone starting would need years to build up the skill base, bug hunt and optimise again.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[koiransuklaa]

Not to mention that if you look at e.g. the kernel (and various other projects), companies like Intel and Nokia.are in the top contributors list... Let's see Oracle buy them.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[the_womble]

Even if the codebase officially known as MySQL withers on the vine, there's still at least 2 forks I can think of that are viable.

Viable perhaps, but not exactly widely used.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[tehcyder]

If it was that easy to become a paid MS shill I'd sign up for a few dozen accounts tomorrow and donate the cash to the EFF or something.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow I doubt they'd be buying up projects like Drupal, Wordpress, or Joomla. But I could see them buying up companies like Jaspersoft, Openbravo, etc. that produce enterprise grade OSS tools used for BI, ERP, etc. which does fit nicely into their business market. Although seeing Oracle in action in the past, it would likely be that they would buy then slowly let the products wither and die to they are no longer a threat to their core business.

Not really

Example: Opensso

When oracle bought sun, one open source product that got seriously shafted was opensso. They went to the point of REMOVING the downloadable binaries, and only making them available to those who had support contracts

result: Some ex-Sun guys created a new company called rockforge, forked opensso into "openam", and moved on.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[rwv]

Even if the codebase officially known as MySQL withers on the vine, there's still at least 2 forks I can think of that are viable.

Are they "Drizzle" and "MariaDB"? I don't recall this being well publicized, but these are the ones that pop up at the top of a Google search for "MySQL fork".

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[JAlexoi]

Their core business is DBMS. But when they took over BEA systems, they basically threw out their own software that was competing with BEA's. So I'd say, it depends on how they do it. Since they both killed off and embraced.

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[jimicus]

They'll have to pay some way over the going rate, because quite a few F/OSS developers feel strongly enough that if that happens, they'll walk rather than sign the contract. Didn't one of the Samba developers do exactly that when Novell signed that Microsoft deal?

Re:Some areas would have no interest

[Surt]

Yeah, I made my estimate based on a fairly generous bump above the going rate.

Does it matter?

[Monkeedude1212]

Then you'd get $10 Billion dollars worth of Forks starting off the last release, and everything would be the same as usual, except that Oracle would have acquired a lot of software.

It would cause a ripple for a while, like it has with MySQL, but trust me, in time - we'll have found another FOSS solution. The same thing would happen elsewhere.

Re:Does it matter?

[FooAtWFU]

It matters because when you buy the "leading open-source company", you also buy the programmers, many of whom will go on to work for Oracle. An open-source project without any developers is probably much better for its users than a closed-source project without developers, sure, but it's still a major setback.

Re:Does it matter?

[ducomputergeek]

We started using PostgreSQL back when Sun bought MySQL. And I can't say we've had any real complaints and actually have found PostgreSQL to be easier to maintain with less table corruption, etc..

Re:Does it matter?

[Monkeedude1212]

It's not so much a set back as it is a delay.

Oracle hasn't done anything with MySQL, despite hiring their leads and axing the rest, MySQL is just as much an OS solution today as it was last year. It's only a matter of time before new developers pick up where MySQL left off under some other fork. Maybe MariaDB?

It's no doubt that Oracle wanted to do this so that Oracle's slow progress will be ahead of what their lead competitor was at - their product becoming clearly superior so boosting sales.

The problem is that it only takes a few bright minds to pick up the project, hurl it back into view, and everything is back to how it was a few years ago.

Re:Does it matter?

[Angst Badger]

It would cause a ripple for a while, like it has with MySQL, but trust me, in time - we'll have found another FOSS solution.

I'd say that Oracle's acquisition of MySQL has done a lot more than cause a ripple. If I wasn't already dependent on it, I wouldn't even consider it for future development, and I am eagerly waiting for one of the forks to a) mature, and b) develop enough of a track record to risk depending on it for the long term, or c) to settle on one or more alternatives such as Postgres and/or some of the so-called NoSQL solutions. The situation with Java isn't as bad, as Java has a base of users (and the enormous anchor of IBM's investment in Java solutions) that is orders of magnitude greater than MySQL, so the leverage Oracle can exert is greatly reduced, but it's still a concern.

Forks -- if you're going to build the necessary developer infrastructure around them and properly support and maintain them -- take time and, more often than not, money. And as a user, transitioning from one ordinary version to another is often expensive, never mind transitioning to a forked version that, more often than not, involves significant changes from the original trunk, MySQL and its descendants being a particularly illustrative example. It's not the end of the world, but it is often a very big deal.

At the end of the day, if an open source project you depend on is maintained by a for-profit company, and the project is sufficiently valuable, someone will eventually come along and buy its maintainer. And if the project is cutting into the bottom line of the buyer, as was the case with MySQL and Oracle, you can be sure that the new owner will make the change as disruptive as possible. It's a basic vulnerability that is built into the commercialization of Open Source. Whether it's a significant risk with any particular project will vary, of course, but it's always there, and the ability to fork is not a panacea.

Re:Does it matter?

[westlake]

it would cause a ripple for a while, like it has with MySQL, but trust me, in time - we'll have found another FOSS solution. The same thing would happen elsewhere.

I wonder.

How many FOSS office suites have the - alleged - maturity of OpenOffice.org?

I believe Sun spent around $200 million on Star Office before open-sourcing OpenOffice - which remains an essentially in-house project to this day - and still second-tier, however much the geek would like to pretend otherwise.

Oracle's core competence is enterprise-grade applications. Not an easy thing to master.

Re:Does it matter?

[tcopeland]

> We started using PostgreSQL back when Sun bought MySQL

Right on. And PostgreSQL is about to remove one of the last big barriers for using it - streaming replication is coming in 9.0. Huzzah! I was just listening to a "Rails on PostgreSQL" talk from Pivotal Labs and that was cited as one of the few places where MySQL was ahead... not for long...

Re:Does it matter?

[Coren22]

MySQL is just as much an OS solution today as it was last year.

I think that would be 0%, since MySQL is not an operating system.

Re:Does it matter?

[ducomputergeek]

Native replication. There's been a number of very good 3rd party tools to do replication & clustering in PostgreSQL for a while now.

Re:Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much a set back as it is a delay.

So the users will be set back by several weeks or months or years?

Re:Does it matter?

[tcopeland]

Sure, yup, Slony and WAL shipping and whatnot. But I think having it built in makes a big difference...

Re:Does it matter?

[kbrosnan]

open source

Re:Does it matter?

[DerekLyons]

It matters because when you buy the "leading open-source company", you also buy the programmers, many of whom will go on to work for Oracle.

Not just their programmers - but also their customer base.
 
Despite the anarchistic "Everyman is own IT department" fantasies of the FOSS movement, most companies and individuals just want something that works. The days when every business, large and small, had to have management, staff, and gurus to roll their own and keep them rolling are viewed with horror as the 'bad old days'. The idea that the software that keeps their business ticking depends on 'some guy in a basement' and his friends are viewed as equally terrifying. (Which is why these FOSS companies exist in the first place.)
 
Slashdot (and by extension the FOSS movement) really needs to realize that in the real world, people and businesses don't jump to forks for political reasons and in fact are cautious about changing things at because the costs (in actual money) and disruptions that accompany such jumps.

Re:Does it matter?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I agree with your last paragraph, but the one before it represents absurd wishful thinking on the part of corporate IT management, not reality. The fact is that there is no off-the-shelf solution -- not from Oracle, nor from some project on Sourceforge -- that will not require "management, staff, and gurus to roll their own and keep them rolling" for any company of reasonable size.

Re:Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that you really like it a lot?

Re:Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Admit it... your mouth is salivating as you anticipate a right good romp in that big steaming pile of shit, the brown gold extruding between the massive gap in your front teeth.

Re:Does it matter?

[DerekLyons]

If you define 'reasonable size' large enough, sure.

Re:Does it matter?

[mcrbids]

we ... found PostgreSQL to be easier to maintain with less table corruption

Really? Because in over 10 years of using Postgres in HEAVY production use, I've never had a table corrupt. Not once. (knocks on wood) Even if PG does corrupt a table someday, it will be a rare event and something that over 10 years of experience indicates is a very rare thing.

MySQL, especially with replication, was about as reliable as a prostitute witness in a court trial. It was just horrible. Tables corrupted constantly, and it was practically my job to reset MySQL (sigh) again from backup!

Now using PG 8.4 and loving it!

Re:Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much a set back as it is a delay.

So the users will be set back by several weeks or months or years?

No, only delayed for a time.

Re:Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a basic vulnerability that is built into the commercialization of Open Source.

How is it different for closed-source?

Re:Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are weeks, months and years not time?

Re:Does it matter?

[JAlexoi]

And how many PostgreSQL guys actually worked for Sun for a while? Sun guys actually were a huge part of the in place upgrade project.

Re:Does it matter?

[rgviza]

MySQL, ahead? with replication?

Surely you are either kidding or you've never been responsible for a large MySQL replication setup. Correction: ever been responsible for a MySQL replication setup and actually audited it.

MySQL replication is a joke, the worst. If you actually do a large implementation and monitor it, and you have a modicum of database traffic, you'll watch it go out of sync over and over. Trying to get a reliable replication setup out of MySQL was the only thing I've ever failed at in my IT career. Granted, I am a developer, not a DBA, but I was picked to do it because we don't have an actual DBA. It simply doesn't work the way you need it to if you are responsible for data integrity. Of course you need to write a monitoring script and check every table to catch it and have enough volume to produce the problem. 4 other guys in my company tried and failed to do the same job. We have all the books on the subject and tried everything.

It's not a total fail, it does replicate. You just lose a row randomly here and there. Sure it's only one row out of 10s of thousands, but you lose data on the slave. Usually within a week we lost at least 10 rows. To bring it back in sync you need to schedule downtime, lock the tables, dump the DBs from your master, load them up in the slave, and restart replication. Since regular downtime isn't an option for us we had to find a better solution.

We finally got the sledge hammer out and went to bitwise disk level volume replication and have never looked back. Crude but effective. MySQL replication is a steaming pile.

Re:Does it matter?

[tcopeland]

Hm, interesting, I haven't observed that. FWIW, I don't think you need to lock the tables if you're using innodb - you can dump the db with the 'single-transaction' option. I don't deny your experience... but I dunno.

Now, I have had problems with replication halting in odd ways and having to skip errors. That's annoying, indeed.

Anyhow, I'll happily leave MySQL behind and move to PostgreSQL any chance I get.

Re:Does it matter?

[Angst Badger]

There's no difference. The common element here is commercialization.

Re:Does it matter?

[orasio]

At the end of the day, if an open source project you depend on is maintained by a for-profit company, and the project is sufficiently valuable, someone will eventually come along and buy its maintainer. And if the project is cutting into the bottom line of the buyer, as was the case with MySQL and Oracle, you can be sure that the new owner will make the change as disruptive as possible. It's a basic vulnerability that is built into the commercialization of Open Source. Whether it's a significant risk with any particular project will vary, of course, but it's always there, and the ability to fork is not a panacea.

At the end of the day, any product you depend on has that risk. The only difference with open source is that there are real world chances that you keep using the software you need after the acquisition, and getting support.
Were you using proprietary software, either you jump on the upgrade treadmill of the buyer company, or you get no chance to have support.
The issue here is not open/proprietary. The risk of larger companies buying the software producer is always high if the software is good and visible enough, and you are not buying from a large company in the first place. In that last case, there are other risks, like the company losing interest in the product.
In the end, nothing is 100% certain, you can only choose what is best for you.

Re:Does it matter?

[badkarmadayaccount]

I think OpenOffice is going to be part of Oracle's new FOSS crown - what better way to undermine MS than attacking on of their major cash cows? It's not just business - 'coz Larry no likey Billy, and all he has achieved.

Impossible to do

[i.r.id10t]

Oracle doesn't have enough $$, Warren Buffet doesn't, Steve Jobs doesn't, Bill Gates doesn't.

Because as soon as I read here on /. that it is happening, I'll grab every single source package I can and make a fork. And I'll encourage everyone I know to do the same. And even at $1 per project, there would be an unlimited number of projects....

Re:Impossible to do

[PalmKiller]

Whoa there, if I were a major contributor, and one of those dropped a few million in my pocket...or heck even enough to just pay off everything I owe, I might decide to stop developing it. As you probably know, if the major contributors of a project abandon it quietly, sometimes just the time lapse with no progress will kill off the project. My point is everything has a price...you just gotta know where to inject the funds.

Re:Impossible to do

[mlts]

Careful, there are always patents. All it would take is for the OSS project purchased to have a patent awarded to it. Then the DMCA can be used to squash any forks of the project.

Re:Impossible to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful, there are always patents. All it would take is for the OSS project purchased to have a patent awarded to it. Then the DMCA can be used to squash any forks of the project.

I'm sorry, but this is one of the most confused posts I've ever seen. A "project" cannot be awarded a patent, only a person or company. The DMCA is about *copyright*, not patents. DMCA takedown notices are for copyright infringement.

Re:Impossible to do

[mlts]

Patent violations are still IP infringement, even if it is for personal use. C&Ds can be easily issued for those just as easily as if someone is offering a pirated application for download.

Re:Impossible to do

[Anonymous Coward]

I did not challenge the idea, only terminology.

They could potentially buy up companies that have patents and develop open source software, then use those patents against people writing and/or using forks. That's not what you said though.

Re:Impossible to do

[thesandtiger]

Exactly. For some people, OSS is like a crusade, but for many others (most of the people doing the heavy lifting, especially at companies that would be bought) I'm betting it's a paycheck.

For a "mere" $10 billion dollars you could just pay key people a few million each to stop working on products in whatever field and you'd have exactly the same kind of smothering effect on things as you would if you spent $70 billion to buy out the companies.

For anyone who isn't ideologically driven to the extreme or independently wealthy, I'm going to say being offered $1-10 million to work on something else or even just stop working would be _quite_ effective.

Re:Impossible to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus if they patent it, the RIAA will have to keep suing otherwise it will lose the patent because of trademark dilution, which will mean they can't keep making movies. For all intensive purposes it's rediculous.

Re:Impossible to do

[Anonymous Coward]

i have seen this ideal pushed in previous posts and i have yet to see one of the largest blocks to the tactic presented.

if oracle or any other market leading company started spending billions, or even millions paying off individuals to just stop working on projects or to come over to there side, very very quickly we would see the EFF and probably individual projects throwing out million and billion dollar anti-trust suits.

no company (that has a large market share, or is about to) would be able to make that large of a number of purchases without attracting attention and the lawyer for damn sure know it will get regulators attention and will advise against such action.

AC by trade, douche by birth, take it how you want /.'ers

Re:Impossible to do

[mcvos]

Who cares what you fork? It's not about the code, it's about the developers and the customers. Sure, you can keep using the existing stuff for free, but Oracle would determine the direction of all meaningful future development.

Re:Impossible to do

[tehcyder]

I'm going to say being offered $1-10 million to work on something else or even just stop working would be _quite_ effective.

If Oracle paid me $10 million I'd agree to stop working, and I'm not even a developer so no harm done to the FOSS movement!

Re:Impossible to do

[JAlexoi]

Being payed to do nothing doesn't work for long, especially with people that are in open-source.

Re:Impossible to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we so completely snow blinded by the volume of FUD the "market" spews forth daily that we actually believe this crap. Most people with actual talent have figured out that the world isn't (just) a penis measuring contest. Probably most developers, and definitely most OSS developers are only looking for a good living wage. After that has been met then the "best" job becomes the one he has the most passion for. Just having a seat at the developers table is the goal of the creator. Let the business minds think with their dicks, OSS will be fine, creators must create.

Re:Impossible to do

[orasio]

Exactly. For some people, OSS is like a crusade, but for many others (most of the people doing the heavy lifting, especially at companies that would be bought) I'm betting it's a paycheck.

You divide all developers into fanatics and mercenaries.I think it's ugly and wrong, because I think only a small minority is in either of those classes.
Aside from that, OSS is not a crusade for anyone. OSS is a technical thing.
Us religious fanatics, who care about ethics, are with Free Software. That is the ideological front, caring about the silly stuff like freedom.

While Intesrting...

[denmarkw00t]

How would this work? Can they technically purchase a whole project? What's to stop the community from forking? What would buying up a project that runs on donations and user support really consist of other than giving the owners large sums of $$ for publicly available code?

Re:While Intesrting...

[Mongoose Disciple]

Mainly, what they can accomplish is to all-but-kill further open source development on a given project. It's very possible to fork, but that doesn't help much to move forward if they buy most of the people making useful improvements/additions to it.

In most cases, I don't think this is smart business -- if you kill a MySQL (and I don't mean to get into the various politics or advantages of these different databases, they're just an easy example that most people will recognize) you probably don't drive enough business to Oracle to make it worth it. As likely you drive as much or more business to other competitors in the same space.

If there's a situation in which killing an open source project nets Oracle an effective monopoly in some space, then maybe it makes business sense. Of course, I've long privately thought that Oracle plans its acquisitions more to take things that are in some way beautiful and ruin them than for any comprehensible business purpose. If corporations are people, they come across as Edward Norton looking to beat the shit out of Jared Leto because they can.

Re:While Intesrting...

[kazagistar]

A large number of projects are run by companies; their main developers are paid wages and keep the projects moving forward. No one stops you from forking, but in the long run, the fork with people working 8 hours a day is going to have more features, progress, and thus more users and mindshare. Alternatively, if the main developers are given money to work on different projects, and abandon their current ones, many might refuse, but many might leave, and a project with low developer participation tends to die. The source code can never go away, but competitive progress can.

Re:While Intesrting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Netbeans is a perfect example of this. Oracle can't abolish it, because it's only semi-"theirs" to start with, but they can (and did) quit paying the salaries of the decent-sized staff of developers who used to account for most of its development. Most of those guys are still involved with Netbeans, of course... but they're now forced to spend 40+ hours/week working for someone else, and Netbeans is pushed onto the back burner as their hobby. Sadly, it's starting to show. It would probably be worse, except lots of those developers are pissed at Oracle and determined to keep Netbeans moving forward just to spite them and show that even with no financial support, they can *still* spank JDeveloper without even trying.

More FOSS would fork from the bought up projects

[petes_PoV]

Open source is not a finite resource. You can't buy *all* of it. You can only buy the ones that are successful today. If (to take an example) Oracle made offers of employment that they couldn't refuse to the main programmers on The Gimp, then anyone who didn;t like the "selling out" (possibly because they didn't get made an offer) could just fork the last non-commercial version and continue down their own particular road.

Because of that, it would be very difficult for Oracle to monetize their purchases. Certainly to the degree that made any sort of financial sense and maybe not to the satisfaction of the shareholders.

Fork them

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at least the code of the companies they acquire.
Somebody else will step in and provide support for money.
Welcome to capitalism.

As an Oracle DBA

[BigJClark]

I think it would sink the company. The more acquistions Oracle buys, the farther away from their source market they get.

Oracle can invest all the capital they want, all I want is a decent install package for the Oracle Instant Client.

Concentrate on what made you those bucks Oracle.

Re:As an Oracle DBA

[Monkeedude1212]

That's funny, all I want is a decent UNINSTALL package for the Oracle Client and Servers.

I'm looking at you, Oracle 8

Re:As an Oracle DBA

[Mongoose Disciple]

Oracle can invest all the capital they want, all I want is a decent install package for the Oracle Instant Client.

I've long been convinced that Oracle's developer/administrator tools are written by self-loathing developers who want to vent their hatred by tormenting other developers. There's just no other logical explanation for how infuriating they can be.

Re:As an Oracle DBA

[reallyjoel]

Oracle is well known in the business (of making money) to have a very good, large and agressive sales force, and that is what have made them large and successful, not the quality of their products.

Re:As an Oracle DBA

[denis-The-menace]

Oracle client 10 is no better.

We had to repackage to get the tweaks we wanted. The package installed amazingly faster compared to Oracle's JAVA-based installer. The catch: we had to include the ~200MB of Oracle's installer metadata to keep getting support.

I hate it when companies create their own installer.

Re:As an Oracle DBA

[afabbro]

That's funny, all I want is a decent UNINSTALL package for the Oracle Client and Servers.

I'm looking at you, Oracle 8

Why are you looking at a product that is three versions old and was dropped from support five years ago?

Oracle since version 9 has provided an installer that does provide an uninstall. It's Java-based and requires X on Linux/Unix, but one thing it does do is install and uninstall Oracle clients and servers.

Re:As an Oracle DBA

[BigJClark]

You must be a salesperson. I'm not a technology zealot, but Oracle is by far the most superior product in the market for mid ot large size datasets serving mid to large size queries (carefully chosen words ;) ). I realize you can polish and sell a turd, but Oracle's scaling, robustness, and attention to detail regarding the optimization of its core engine, is what sells it, and has for the past ~30 years.

Now MS has the exact same yammering salespeople who drive me nuts when they tout the strength of their package, but I've explored it with the intimate detail that only a DBA can.

Read my lips: Its crap.

When you start to pull away from the sales pitch, super easy install, and drop and go fascade, you quickly unveil a half working SQL engine, a busted backup model, and an internal engine that turns itself into muck heaven forbid if anybody hit it with any sort of large query.

Sorry, its the Oracle DBMS engine that has made them the big bucks. Don't even get me started on Oracle forms and reports.

Re:As an Oracle DBA

[ahmusch]

And Oracle in version 7 had a character based installer that didn't require X. And there's still no good reason for Oracle to require X for installation and installation alone.

Re:As an Oracle DBA

[Monkeedude1212]

Why are you looking at a product that is three versions old and was dropped from support five years ago?

You don't work for a cheap company, do you.

We are up on 10g now, looking to jump up again - but that doesn't make removing 8i off the old machines any easier. When you keep a computer running for longer than 4 years, these sort of things happen.

Re:As an Oracle DBA

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Microsoft DBA, I repeat everything you just said, only with the two products switched. You see, fanboyism is fucking gay, no matter what product we're talking about. Stop it.

Re:As an Oracle DBA

[JAlexoi]

Hm... Then your mind would be blown away by DB2 on Mainframe.

Re:As an Oracle DBA

[Joey Vegetables]

As someone with moderate experience with both, for any of the data sets I've worked with thus far (admittedly most in the 1 to 50 gigabyte range, not terabytes), both are acceptable but I would choose PostgreSQL over either. And I'd choose a good DBA over any of the three. Really large data sets require more than just a good RDBMS; they require a good DBA, good architecture, and good design.

Re:As an Oracle DBA

[samwhite_y]

I agree with the above comment, though I do not think the differences are so severe. But I did want to go into the particulars of why Oracle has the best database product out there. This is from somebody who has developed a product that can run on most databases and has been deployed at 1000s of customers, some of whom have scaled up to billions of records. Here is my itemized list in order of importance (at least for the product I worked on).

1. Oracle has true row level transaction isolation. You start a transaction and you do not interfere with anybody who may be reading the rows you are updating. You also do not interfere with the updates to rows that are stored in the same "page". Databases that do not do this properly get two problems. The first is dirty reads where other transactions read rows that are temporarily in an inconsistent state with other rows (add a number to one row, subtract it from another, the other transaction sees the add but not the subtract). But the real problem is transaction deadlocks where each transaction is locking each other because they locked rows they were not supposed to. If you write code that is constantly "transactionally" grooming statistical data about the relative ranking of some row versus others, you will find it impossible to avoid these deadlocks. Only Oracle gives you true full row level (not "page level" as in SQL Server) transaction isolation. Developers in my group have written test programs specifically to prove this.

2. Oracle has sophisticated diagnostic tools that can help diagnose things such as: Why is this query running slowly? Is this data possibly corrupted? Where are my indexes stored and how well are they working? You have a lot of control over these things and that can really help scale a system from a million records to a billion records in a reliable way.

3. Ways to take advantage of multiple disks and fast independent IO to each disk. You can write your transaction log to one disk, partition data based on a particular column's value to various disks (for example if a column indicates "branch" of a company, each branch can have its own disk to store its data), write indexes to yet another disk. When you read or write, the database will read and write from these disks concurrently (really powerful on multi CPU/Core boxes). If the database determines that the query is targeting only a particular partition (for example, the query targets a particular "branch"), then it may figure out that it does not have to read data from the other disks at all. So if two such queries come in targeting different partitions, they will be doing IO to independent disks with independent hardware IO streams. I have had systems that were non functional for a customer become quite useful after applying clever tricks of this type (especially the partitioning when you have more than 20 partitions).

You may argue that most applications that are out there do not need these things. This is true, but nobody is going to make money from selling products to deployers of those applications -- they can usually get by on the free stuff (or close to free). If you need something from a database for which you are willing to pay real money, then Oracle still has some unmatched features.

3 reasons

[tomhudson]

1. Not everyone is a prima donna crybaby like Monty Widenius.

2. Publicly available doesn't mean it doesn't have worth - and it would be a good way to have an "official" product in every category when you're selling - and supporting - a complete stack. And support is where they make their money. Those Oracle license would be worthless without support.

3. Setting direction. If you want to be able to set the direction of a product, you need to pony up some money.

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[Monkeedude1212]

We'll start the bidding at -$5.00

(Yes, you pay us to take you over)

Patent Trolling

[vlm]

Wouldn't they get more bang for their buck by doing $70 Billion of patent trolling?

Not necessarily anti-open source trolling either. $70 Billion of patent trolling could make quite a dent in the MSSQL market, pushing the end users toward either mysql or oracle. After all, its not an "evil" monopoly if there's a free alternative, conveniently owned by the monopolist...

OSS Programmers Finally Get A Payday

[theshowmecanuck]

Then the programmers of the open source software projects will finally get a decent payday without some prick forking their code and diluting their potential customer/profit pool so he/she can't make a living. And then having the mother forker fucking up the code and giving them both a bad name. Then the OSS developer will be able to afford to fork the original and enhance the original to really make a quality product that can be sold and used until another prick forks his/her work and dilutes the potential customer/profit base. Or perhaps until Oracle decides to use and enhance the original.

Re:OSS Programmers Finally Get A Payday

[TooMuchToDo]

So don't use a license that allows a code fork. You can't use the GPL or similar license and then whine like a baby that someone forked your code and you're not going to get $BIG_PAYDAY.

Re:OSS Programmers Finally Get A Payday

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate mother forkers.

Do they need "all of them"?

[bsDaemon]

Buying "all" open source companies would be a bit over-dramatic, but I could see perhaps a few strategic buys. For instance, buying RedHat. Oracle has their own respin of RHEL, but rather than being at the mercy of the release schedule a la CentOS, buying RH would give them more control over the pace of things, not to mention getting a lot of major contributors on the books. RedHat also owns JBoss, which might be worth their time and money to acquire, too. I doubt that it'd happen though, which is probably a good thing.

Re:Do they need "all of them"?

[mmkkbb]

Oracle already has a J2EE server now that they own WebLogic through the BEA acquisition.

Re:Do they need "all of them"?

[bsDaemon]

All the more reason to acquire JBoss, loot it for the good stuff, integrate it into their other product, and maybe kill off JBoss, or just milk it for a while and double-dip. But an Oracle acquisition of RedHat and its assets at least makes some sort of sense (and they can afford it. RH has like, a $5bn market capitalization, so Oracle will have plenty of change left over) unlike, say, Gimp, or a bunch of random crap like other people seem to be floating as examples of why the concept of the article is stupid.

Re:Do they need "all of them"?

[mlts]

I can see Oracle easily buying RedHat. As of now, there is an exodus of people from Sun/Solaris to x86 hardware/RHEL. By buying RedHat and making the OS chargable, or just doing with RedHat altogether would be a major coup for Ellison. Where would people flee to? Essentially, either IBM and AIX for big iron, SuSE and Novell for another, or go Windows.

Re:Do they need "all of them"?

[PotatoFarmer]

Oracle already has a J2EE server now that they own WebLogic through the BEA acquisition.

They had one prior to the acquisition with OAS. Didn't stop them from buying out their biggest competitor not named IBM.

Re:Do they need "all of them"?

[Anonymous Coward]

how about the canonical linux that everyone uses?

Suddenly

[toxygen01]

... everyone would start developing opensource.

Re:Suddenly

[JAlexoi]

I think that is the whole idea behind this.

a large portion aren't buy-able

[Trepidity]

Oracle can only really effectively buy open-source companies of the MySQL variety: where the vast majority of development is done by one, medium-sized, for-profit company closely associated with the project. Stretching a little more, they can buy multi-project companies on the lower end of "large" that do a lot of open-source development, like Sun.

But a lot of open-source is done by groups that deviate to either side of that. Either they're more distributed open-source projects with no central entity to buy in the first place, or they're run by very large companies that Oracle couldn't possibly buy, like Google and IBM.

Re:a large portion aren't buy-able

[Terrasque]

Indeed they aren't all buyable. You'd bet some of them would have refused some way or another.

Small OSS company : "70 billion war chest, you say? Going to buy out all OSS, eh? Okay, my company will sell for 80 billion."
Oracle representative : "Are you out of your mind? It isn't worth ONE billion!"
Small OSS company : "That's correct. It's worth 80 billion. Now, are you going to buy it or go away?"

Re:a large portion aren't buy-able

[dAzED1]

that is so, so easy for a person not being given an offer to say. If someone came up to you tomorrow and said they wanted you to continue doing what you're doing now, but just let your check be signed by Oracle instead, and your salary would be $500k...you'd say no?

It would take people of the RMS variety to actually do such a thing, and we really don't have that many of those. The ones we have, we make fun of.

Re:a large portion aren't buy-able

[JAlexoi]

All they need to do is send all of the developers in that OSS company an all expense paid year long round the world cruise(no internet connection on board). That will cost them less than buying the company and will definitely disable the company for a year....

Re:a large portion aren't buy-able

[dAzED1]

err...well, that works for anyone who doesn't have a family...

My wife is getting another doctorate right now. Are you suggesting I spend a year without my wife? Can my dog come, or is she staying with my wife? Great, an oceanliner filled with overweight, balding, bearded men (as OSS devs stereotypically are)...that sounds like an amazing time. I have my own goals in life, and a year-long ocean cruise doesn't fit in those plans.

While almost all OSS devs would have a relatively affordable buyout price, you'd get very very few mid and high-profile devs with the offer of leaving their homes and family for a year. A month maybe, but...not a year.

What If . . .

[hardburn]

What if squirrels had wings and shot cruise missiles out of their tail? That's about as grounded in reality as Oracle buying up everything.

Re:What If . . .

[Surt]

Grounded in the sense that squirrels in fact do have wings, and Oracle does have a lot of money?

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

Now the cruise missile part ... that would be interesting. I suppose the immediate consequence would be the death of just about everyone in North America ... I don't know how many continents have large numbers of squirrels, but it really could lead to quite the apocalypse. ;-)

Re:What If . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

What if squirrels had wings and shot cruise missiles out of their tail?

I'm intrigued by your ideas, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter...

Re:What If . . .

[afabbro]

What if squirrels had wings and shot cruise missiles out of their tail?

Well, that would be awesome, obviously.

Re:What If . . .

[spazekaat]

Quit feeding the squirrels Red Bull, and they won't have wings, you insensitive clod!!

Re:What If . . .

[bigredradio]

I agree, when did someones hypothetical unrealistic situation become news?

Re:What If . . .

[bigredradio]

Oh, wait. I forgot about the war in Iraq....

Re:What If . . .

[blair1q]

Apropos of that but not much else, I'm still peeved that they left blast-ended skrewts out of the movies.

Re:What If . . .

[hardburn]

Flying squirrels don't really have wings, in the sense of being able to generate meaningful lift. It's more like a parachute than a wing.

But yes, it would be the most hilarious apocalypse ever.

Re:What If . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

You've apparently never heard of this guy:

http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/public/news_images/4/70680_165523_2.jpg

Re:What If . . .

[Locke2005]

Not as awesome as flying squirrels with frickin' laser beams mounted on their heads!

Re:What If . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

With that kind of firepower we'll have to tolerate listening to them talk about their nuts all day.

Re:What If . . .

[jijitus]

The Insightfulness of your comment mesmerizes me

Re:What If . . .

[ozbird]

"Again?! That trick nevers works."

Re:What If . . .

[bazorg]

What if squirrels had wings and shot cruise missiles out of their tail?

they would still be no match for the sharks with fricking lasers mounted on their heads...

?Stupid lady why buy what you get for fREE?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a stupid lady lday

Hmm

[buddyglass]

I've always questioned the logic of buying an open source company. What do you really get? You don't get the IP since that's open sourced anyway. You don't get the employees since they can always leave. You maybe get some customers, but then those guys can always switch to a fork of the project. Potentially a fork that's being run by the same developers responsible for the original project.

Re:Hmm

[bhlowe]

Buying an open source project might: 1. Keep the developers from working for a competitor. 2. Keep the developers from suing the purchasing company over some form of GPL violation. 3. Allow the purchasing company to integrate the IP into more products/services 4. Slow the momentum of future open source development of the project (by co-opting the main developers, writing in do-not-compete clauses, etc.)

Re:Hmm

[mmkkbb]

You DO get IP, even if it's free software. Even with the GPL, you could stop distributing old versions and re-license future versions if you control the copyright. Open source projects aren't alone in having employees that will leave in an acquisition, and it's clear that whether everyone leaves after an acquisition is almost entirely dependent on the specifics of the deal. You get revenue from support contracts, and your customers aren't going to switch to a new branch just because of a change in ownership if the new owners are sympathetic, and a new branch may not even come about.

Yeah, there's risk that any of your problems could happen but everyday business is a risk too.

Re:Hmm

[mlts]

There is always support. For example, if an OSS company makes and supports a product, it gets bought out and the company dissolved, then even though the product may be forked, there will be no way for customers to get support for the product. Of course, the ex-employees can form around the forked project, but it will take time and effort rebuilding the customer base and getting the support contracts back.

Re:Hmm

[TooMuchToDo]

Unless your open source company is in California, in which case your non-compete is void as a matter of law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause#California

Re:Hmm

[Mongoose Disciple]

Yes, but... if we're playing the "what could Oracle do by throwing ridiculous amounts of money around" game, there are probably ways around that.

For example, Oracle buys up most of the top contributors to PostgreSQL by offering them much better salaries/benefits to work on OraclePostgre than they could get in any other way, and additionally offers them $X giant bonus or stock options or what have you if OraclePostgre has Y% market share by some metric in two years -- such that they legally could choose to compete with themselves in an open source fork, but would be throwing away big piles of money to do it.

You can't buy everyone, but probably it's not even very expensive in the grand scheme of things to buy enough of the people that matter.

Re:Hmm

[jonbryce]

MySQL makes its money from selling non-OSS versions of the software. As Oracle owns the copyright, the fork projects don't have that revenue stream available to them.

Re:Hmm

[Trepidity]

You might get the trademark, which may or may not be valuable. At the very least, it throws a wrench in the work of future forks, because they can't use the trademark that you now own to describe themselves, so they have to come up with a new name, and find a way to publicize the fact that they're now operating under a new name. The new name probably can't use the old name as a component, either--- your fork of MySQL would run afoul of trademark law if you named it NewMySQL or something.

Re:Hmm

[selven]

You don't get the IP since that's open sourced anyway.

You do if the business involves making software with a GPL version and selling a version with proprietary licensing (like MySQL).

Re:Hmm

[Kjella]

You DO get IP, even if it's free software. Even with the GPL, you could stop distributing old versions and re-license future versions if you control the copyright.

If and only if the project requires copyright assignment, yes. But that is only a small minority of projects and typically projects that almost in their entirety been written by one group or company and has not been superseeded by a community based fork. There's a few projects like that, for example OpenOffice (Sun) and Qt (Nokia) but they're not many. Or actually I think what I had to agree to in order to contribute to Qt I don't think was an assignment, just pretty much a license to let them do anything and everything with it.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You get the legitimacy that comes with the project plus the resources that you had to begin with. If I bought MySQL and I was oracle, I would go through the list of my clients that left me in th past 5 years, and contact them explaining on behalf of MySQL say that we are selling support contracts. Oracle's internal customer list, support desk staff(that can support and expand to support huge volumes of issues), and the MySQL name in front of that support infrastructure probably offset buying them. Let alone all the IP that they could use in other products (now avoiding the GPL, because they own the rights) or the community development they can try to steer.

If you are considering buying an open source software company you need to determine how that fits into existing structure. If you are have a support or consulting business model it may be easier than other with a boxed software business model.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you do get a shot at taking the employees all together, as a unit, which is perhaps more than you could have got otherwise. If you really want them then you try to retain them. You might also get control of the project leaders (via share agreements, some form of golden handcuffs, etc) and thus greater influence on the product and greater high-level management insight into what to do with it...

Re:Hmm

[durdur]

Larry has said as much, publicly. Why spend a lot of money and have no IP? And in fact Oracle has almost never bought an open source project, except InnoDB and BerkeleyDB, which were very small deals in $ terms (they got MySQL as a side effect of buying Sun - they would never have paid for it what Sun paid).

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[Surt]

Buy enough developers, slow your OS competitors to a crawl.

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[igny]

We'll start the bidding at -$5.00

(Yes, you pay us to take you over)

I bid -$10.00.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[ultranova]

Because of that, it would be very difficult for Oracle to monetize their purchases.

Unless they used some of that 10 billion dollars to have the GPL declared invalid, or something to that effect. Yes, it's nonsensical, but $10 billion can help finance a lot of campaigns, plenty of astroturfers, and an army of lawyers, so I'm not so sure they couldn't do it.

He who has the gold makes the rules.

please buy all KDE projects

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish Oracle would buy all KDE projects so that the forked projects can be renamed to exclude the 'k' at the beginning of the name.

Re:please buy all KDE projects

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, really; it's seriously affecting turnout at the KDE is Kool Klan meetings too.

Re:please buy all KDE projects

[jijitus]

Let's see...
Kate ... Oat
Kile ... Oil
Kompare ... Oompare
Kigo ... Oigo
Kolf ... 'olf
Konqueror ... Onqueror
Amarok ... Amaroo

Wow, we don't want to play this game, do we?

[Just_Say_Duhhh]

Maybe TFA was poorly worded, but can't we give it some thought? How about, "what if Oracle bought your favorite FOSS? Right now, VirtualBox is the coolest piece of software I use. It is incredibly full-featured, and insanely useful. Oracle has recently put their paws on it, so what's it going to mean? Fewer updates? No more source releases? Super expensive licensing fees? I'm holding my breath, but it would have been cool to discuss such possibilities here...if only you'd play the game.

trickle-down economics effects

[Anonymous Coward]

i wonder what the trickle-down economic effects of something like this would be...

How do you buy open source?

[RichMan]

Please explain how you buy open source. The source code is out there in the wild. New developers appear every day.

If you want to play the monopolist that will invite new people to step in and enter the market.

That is the beauty of open source. It is the ultimate opposition to monopolist behavior as it makes the barrier to entry effectively zero.

Of course there are the usual costs or starting a business but with open source there are no real barriers to market entry.

Re:How do you buy open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could change the license to something other than the GPL.
Even if the source code is 'out in the wild' you still have a legal leg on anyone trying to use it without your license. If the EFF can do a their job policing GPL'd code on their budget, I'm sure Oracle can do even better with their $70B war chest.

Re:How do you buy open source?

[andrewd18]

Even if the source code is 'out in the wild' you still have a legal leg on anyone trying to future versions without your license.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[chemisus]

do i hear a -$15.00?

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[Surt]

So now we're in a price-is-right bidding war, trying to find the largest sum that Gordonjcp can afford to pay to have his company taken over, without going over (after all, if he can't pay up, it'd really be wrong of him not to reject your bid). -$50,000.00!

Didn't they do this already?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean didn't Larry make his fortune by buying something that was open source and then re-packaging and branding it as Oracle?

Or did I drink the kool-aid and believe someones rampant lies?

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[CyprusBlue113]

Tell that to Cisco re: busybox, they'd love to know.

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[jgagnon]

I bid negative infinity squared!

Wait... erm... nevermind.

What if instead of Oracle, Microsoft?

[dpilot]

If Microsoft were to attempt to buy every open source company, quite a few people would get quite agitated, including the antitrust division of the DOJ.

Oracle is a little bit different, because of size, market span, and market share. But it's still not that far from the same thing - M-O-N-O-P-O-L-Y - just in a slightly different marketplace.

Dear Larry Ellison

[Anonymous Coward]

Please buy Microsoft and end its misery. Paul Graham
has noted that Microsoft is dead. Your purchase would end a monopoly that the U.S. Justice Department should have ended.

You will be a GNU hero with your Microsoft purchase. I would be willing to manage this purchase for you for the lump sum payment of Euro 50,000,000. I look forward to our meeting.

Thank you for your consideration.

Yours In Astrakhan,
Kilgore Trout, C.I.O.

What if...

[OnePumpChump]

What if Oracle tried to scoop up all the water with a sieve?

Wrong Tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't 'buy' the open source software. You buy the companies that host the source trees. Shut them down and then watch the universe scramble.

Everything would not be the same

[betterunixthanunix]

Take a look at contributions to open source projects that are popular in enterprise environments -- large percentages of the patches come from open source companies. If Oracle bought up all these companies, there is no guarantee that those patches would continue to be contributed, particularly if the projects directly compete with Oracle's offerings. Sure, volunteers can do a lot, but it is nice to have people who are paid to develop these projects, particularly since there is a good level of assurance that the projects will not be orphaned or abandoned. It also helps to have companies around that push for hardware compatibility, and to have companies that can help protect the rest of us from patent trolls.

'Acquire' free software?

[bluhatter]

$10B for open source software? They do know they can download it for free... right?

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[digitig]

I assume you have done due diligence, and made sure the company debts don't swamp the negative sums you're bidding...

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[Anonymous Coward]

While open source is not a finite resource, the number of competent developers interested in a particular open source project IS finite. Especially if you qualify that by saying that they have to be interested in working on the project for free. If you buy out enough of the main programmers, you will certainly cripple the continuing OSS forks that will occur.

They probably don't care about every OSS project - they could be strategic about it and kill of projects that are good enough to be considered a competitor.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[Anonymous Coward]

If (to take an example) Oracle made offers of employment that they couldn't refuse to the main programmers on The Gimp

As I understand it, Oracle would then own the copyright on the name "The Gimp" so the existing GPL code would have to be renamed to something else. If this is the only way we can get The Gimp to pick a another name for their fine program I say go for it!

Drink Brawndo!

[Rene S. Hollan]

Its got electrolytes! Its got what plants crave!!

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[jonbryce]

Declaring the GPL invalid doesn't help Cisco use Busybox without the copyright owner's permission. The Busybox cases are not GPL cases, they are straightforward software piracy cases just the same as the guy who sells dodgy copies of Microsoft Office at car boot sales.

What if ...

[The AtomicPunk]

Instead, the spent about $20 worth of someone's time to plant a FUD story on slashdot?! :)

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[Anonymous Coward]

You want cubed - that will retain the sign.

sun buyout

[sageres]

I still can't comprehend how, what economic forces could have allowed Sun to be in position to be bought over by Oracle, and not the other way around. Consider: Sun had EVERYTHING that Oracle had and more: 1. Its own database systems 2. Its own java application servers 3. Its own web servers /w LDAP servers 4. And on top of that pile up Java, Sparc / Solaris, various Java-based tech, etc. 5. Don't forget the Sun VM. Now look, Oracle is killing many of the old Sun projects. Looking Glass has gone to dust (maybe even before the purchase), mysql is suffering and most likely will die. I found out that they will no longer manufacture sparc desktops, leaving us the sweet memories of blade150 running Solaris9. Oh and OpenSolaris -- already in danger of loosing its community. What would happened? Oracle turns out to be more evil then Microsoft ever was.

Re:sun buyout

[wizkid]

Sun got killed during the year 2000 dot-bomb. They had heavily leased systems to every dot-bomb that they could, and then they all went bankrupt, taking sun down with them.
That's how they ended up in the boat that their in. Kinda sad, they were a good company. So far, Oracle has been doing a great job of destroying what was once a good company.

Re:sun buyout

[eln]

Sun had everything but a halfway competent management team that knew how to make money. Oracle, on the other hand, has a fantastic management team that specializes in making truckloads of money. You can have all the cool tech in the world, but if you can't make money with it you're doomed.

Better phrased as: what if Oracle threw $70B away?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr Ellison would be tossed out of his yacht and into a leaky dinghy, that's what. Seriously, no one is going to buy hundreds of companies and try to integrate them all, especially when many of them simply won't sell in the first place, or would spin off a substantially similar business the instant they took the cash.

I see Oracle attempting a hostile takeover of redhat in the future (they won't sell willingly) in order to acquire RHEL and JBoss, but that's about it.

The code stays open source

[Dunbal]

It's the code that's open source, not the company. They are free to spend their money as they wish. Those of us who disagree can fork at any time.

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[Anonymous Coward]

May I offer you the cure for your open sores? http://www.microsoft.com/

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[ogdenk]

Yes but if you cause disruptive sudden forks in projects, you slow their progress writing new code and they can't use the same name necessarily so brand recognition is gone.

It could also be disruptive in the sense that it will damage the reputation of open source.... "Do business with us, we're stable and we'll be here tomorrow. It's risky using free products developed as a hobby because those guys are an unorganized mess and in no position to provide effective support. Heck they may just decide to stop coding on a whim and leave you high and dry with no support OR EVEN AN UPGRADE PATH! Jeez.... just look what happened to Project $name"

Would not surprise me in the least from Oracle or MS.

Uh IBM?

[Yaur]

isn't IBM a big open source contributer and isn't $80B not nearly enough to buy them? They can buy up some projects, but so what? If they maintain them in the spirit of open source nothing changes if they don't then they will be forked or abandoned. In any case I don't think they can change the ecosystem as a whole much.

Oracle: Candy?

[MRe_nl]

FoSS: Do you already know if I'm going to take it?
Oracle: Wouldn't be much of an Oracle if I didn't.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[ScrewMaster]

Because of that, it would be very difficult for Oracle to monetize their purchases.

That isn't what we're discussing, and I doubt very much if Ellison & Co, should they go down this road, would care one whit for monetizing any projects they acquire or with which they otherwise interfere. The idea is for Oracle to disrupt the development of any open source offerings that would compete with its own core products, much as Microsoft has done for decades (for both open and closed source software, for that matter.) So far as shareholders are concerned, investing in the destruction of one's competition is always justifiable.

'Open'Solaris dying

[GoNINzo]

If they treat any of them like they've treated OpenSolaris, then I'd say they would die a slow death.

At this point, the last release was June 2009. Development has stopped being exposed to the outside world, we were expecting a May release, and we're going on August now. There still has not been official announcement by Oracle on this topic either.

While OpenSolaris is not a true open source product, it has been mistreated since the Oracle take over. It is unclear why there has been nothing said on it, but I'd rather take a project death at this point than this continued silence. Several key people have left to move onto other projects as well, though others are saying that development is still continuing. And worst of all, it would be a pain in the ass to fork because of their particular license design choice.

The forums have been rather full of people complaining about it as well. Especially after the OpenSolaris board has threatened to kill itself off if Oracle doesn't make some key decisions.

Just bad news all around. And it would be so easy to fix too, just by giving us an official statement on it's future.

Re:'Open'Solaris dying

[Anonymous Coward]

The only Sun open source projects that are going to survive inside Oracle are as follows:
MySQL
Java
OpenOffice
Virtual Box(not sure it is 100% open source)

The rest will be canceled or die a slow death from neglect.

You mean projects like Open Solaris & OpenSSO

[ChaseTec]

Oracle doesn't want some of the open source projects they paid for.

$70b?

[Anonymous Coward]

With that kind of money, they can buy the State of California in a short sale.

easy answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Just fork em! Fork em all!

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand it. You can Trademark a name, you can't Copyright it. Near as I can tell, The Gimp is not a registered trademark, and the Gimp's website would lead me to believe they make no claim of trademark whatsoever.

I'd drain him.

[blair1q]

I have an open source license to the software; he can buy the people who wrote it, but he can't kill my license.

I can make forks of it.

He'd have to buy each one from me individually to pwn the OSS universe.

I can keep pulling forks out of my pocket, perpetually.

Can he do the same with dollars?

The inductive endgame is that he'd have to buy my rights from me. He'd have to do this for every copy in existence, though, or I'd find one and start forking that one.

He'd have to pay me as part of a contract never to acquire another copy from anyone other than him.

And I'm not selling him that right. That one's mine. I'm keeping it.

forking doesn't solve all the problems

[farble1670]

i'm very tired of hearing "i'll just fork", or "you can't buy an open source project" whenever this comes up.

most OSS projects are heavily funded by commercial outlets, and most often its a single outlet. you can buy an OSS project by buying the developers, or in other words buying the mindshare. whether they quit after the acquisition with bonuses tied to no-compete clauses, or whether they stay on and get put onto other projects, they are gone for the most part.

sure, it's theoretically possible that a troupe of new developers will swoop in and carry on, but that just doesn't happen, in most cases. developers are not 100% portable. that means that it takes a gifted developer to come in and take over a code base designed by someone else. in most cases, you get spot fixes that don't see the overall vision, resulting in increasing bugs and a code base that eventually must be re-written.

and, you rarely get gifted developers with such an interest. working with someone else's vision is not fun. building your own vision is. why would a gifted developer use their nights and weekends to carry on someone else's vision?

Re:forking doesn't solve all the problems

[stephanruby]

and, you rarely get gifted developers with such an interest. working with someone else's vision is not fun. building your own vision is. why would a gifted developer use their nights and weekends to carry on someone else's vision?

That same argument goes the other way too. Why would a core developer continue working his butt off for a company that is not in alignment with his own personal vision/philosophy? The pay-check is one reason (assuming it clears). The non-compete is another (although, in California most non-competes are invalid). The options package is a third (although, that one too can become worthless in the blink of an eye).

Take the main developer of Ethereal for instance. He let his project become acquired. He didn't get along with management. He left the company, taking his code because it was open source, leaving the name and everything else because he didn't own those parts. Now, his project is called WireShark. And who did the customers/users follow? They followed him. They followed the main developer. Ethereal, as far I'm aware, is no more.

Re:forking doesn't solve all the problems

[Anonymous Coward]

open source is for faggots anyway. who'd follow the lead of a faggot but another faggot?

Re:forking doesn't solve all the problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I like code. Yeah, I like mine best. But I love digging into other peoples code and trying to grasp a bigger picture. Didn't anyone else tear into wordpress 3?

Re:forking doesn't solve all the problems

[QuantumRiff]

Interesting thought.. Imagine if Oracle offered Linus and Alan Cox, and maybe a few other key players jobs at $5million a year. And then tried to feed them the company kool-aid. That could really stunt the growth of linux for a while. (not that I think they would, but many of the biggest projects have a very key person or two)

Re:forking doesn't solve all the problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the gifted developer is using that vision as a base for something he is building

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll start my bidding by suing for $675,000 in damages to my intellectual property.
Frankly, you'd have to be bonkers to enter the US business market these days. The lawyers have made it impossible to move forward.

All the names would change.

[Culture20]

Everything would fork. Whoopdie freakin do.

When you can't innovate....

[Anonymous Coward]

you buy the best thing out there to make yourself desirable.

It would be like buying a Hollywood Studio

[Isaac-1]

It would be like when Sony bought out a major Hollywood studio some years ago, in the end they found out they had paid X billions of dollars for some industrial land in Burbank when all the talent walked off.

Re:It would be like buying a Hollywood Studio

[Required Snark]

There are so many inaccuracies in this that it is hard to know where to start. Sony bought Columbia and got Gruber-Peters to run it, and later purchased the MGM lot in Culver City. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures for the details.

Culver City is not anywhere near Burbank, which is where Disney is located. It is 10 or 12 miles the most direct route on surface streets, and 20 to 25 miles via freeway, which is almost always faster except in rush hour, were every route takes two hour or more. As far as I know, or have ever heard, Sony never ended up with "X billions of dollars for some industrial land in Burbank".

Over the long run Sony made money with their film/TV unit. They had a big write-down in 1995 for about $2.5 Billion (US), but have done reasonably well since then. See http://www.google.com/search?q=sony+pictures+revenue+history&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=7Ru&sa=X&pwst=1&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=rm5PTPZQjbqxA6TuhfAH&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11&ved=0CEwQ5wIwCg for the the total entertainment revenue which includes music (I think). This chart shows a successful profitable film/TV business unit.

Your are almost certainly confusing this with the Universal/Matsushita acquisition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Studios#Matsushita_and_Vivendi which was widely viewed in Hollywood (the business/cultural community) as taking a bunch of naive out of town investors to the cleaners i.e. ripping off a bunch of cash from people who should have known better. Universal is in the San Fernando Valley, so it is not to far from Burbank, but it is not in Burbank, and it was never a bunch of empty worthless industrial property. Universal City has always been prime real estate, subject to the normal up and downs of Southern California real estate prices (aka Boom and Bust).

I know that Slashdot is often a fact free zone, but in this case there is actual history, and it is not that hard to ask Mr. Google or go the Wikipedia and have some idea of what you are talking about.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[tnk1]

Of course, we are also assuming that Oracle is all that interested in killing Open Source, which I honestly don't think it is. Sure they have MySQL, but that was a side-effect of the Sun purchase, they probably were just as interested (if not more) in getting their hands on Java and making it more useful for Oracle. Neither MySQL nor Java to a lesser extent can be completely owned by anyone, but Oracle has some interest in getting some greater degree of influence over both.

What Oracle does not have is an interest in is in unilaterally acting to remove Open Source entirely. Sure, Ellison probably hates its guts, but it's not bankrupting him or his company by a long shot. Just because you have enough money to do something doesn't mean that you don't have better uses for that money.

If and Buts

[Anonymous Coward]

If worms had machine guns, birds wouldn't fuck with them.

keep eating shit dumb asses

[Anonymous Coward]

open source is for faggots.

in a word:

[nimbius]

oracle exec's would have "money cant buy me love" stuck in their heads all day, and the FLOSS community would see more forks in a week than a dishwasher at the hofbrauhaus.

Obligatory Obi-Wan

[lotho brandybuck]

As if millions of voices cried out in terror....

Seriously, what I'd like Ellison to do, is really support openoffice. Improvements, cleanups, Java exorcism, and fonts...

Larry, everybody thinks Bill has more money than you! Bill is a household name, and nobody (outside of the techies) knows who you are. You can compensate with big yachts and planes and adventures, but you'll never be as big as Billy until you destroy the MS lockin... Office!

$10b?

[Anonymous Coward]

doesn't open source mean free?

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[westlake]

then anyone who didn;t like the "selling out" (possibly because they didn't get made an offer) could just fork the last non-commercial version and continue down their own particular road.

How far are you going to get on your own?

Forking a project the size of The GIMP is not a trivial problem.

Particularly if your A-list contributers are looking at full-time employment, profit-sharing and benefits from Oracle - and eight and nine figure budgets for their next big enterprise project.

Idealism is wonderful, but it doesn't pay the rent.
   

In other news

[Locke2005]

If Larry Ellison took every personal secretary he's ever had and laid them end-to-end, he'd have a few more sexual discrimination suites to answer to!

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[Americano]

Open source is not a finite resource.

True, but your argument assumes that "qualified and talented programmers" are an infinite resource. Just because I don't like the developers "selling out" doesn't mean I'm qualified to understand and work on the code of the people who did. I could fork it, and try to continue on, but it's likely that the pace of bug fixes and new features would slow to a crawl in the meantime, giving Oracle & the talented devs they hired away the opportunity to open the gap in terms of functionality and stability, leaving you with OraGimp : Gimp :: MS Office : OpenOffice relationship.

Open Office is a "good enough" contender, but it doesn't have feature parity with MS Office, and that certainly has an effect on its rate of adoption.

And...

[Locke2005]

If my grandfather had 5 balls, he'd be a pinball machine!

Could IBM Buy the Internet?

[peterofoz]

Back in the 1995, IBM spent 3.5 billion to purchase Lotus, primarily for Lotus Notes. At that time they could have purchased the internet backbone, routers, CISCO, all of it. Did they make the right choice?

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[Gordonjcp]

Why would a company that sells software that doesn't do (and indeed *can't* do) what I want be of use to me?

This won't happen.

[CherniyVolk]

I think the author of the post forgot about the FTC investigation into Oracle purchasing Sun Microsystems, because of the Open Source interests that would be acquired specifically MySQL.

This says one thing, the FTC recognizes FSF/FOSS as a market force.

Should Oracle, or any other company for that matter attempt to buy up any commercial support for FOSS, I believe the FTC and Governments around the globe would have them in court before the transaction could take place. Their 70 billion will be drained from their coffers into the bonus checks of all those law firms.

Oracle is an IT company, who has had the luxury if evading almost every 'war' this industry has seen. It's what makes them so scary in a way, but it also allows them to maneuver under the guise that there's no historical reasons to over react. They realize, I'm sure, that all their monies come from *us*. Who else is going to recommend Oracle? Expensive, Oracle? They aren't in the position of Microsoft, who can disregard the industries brightest minds because stupid people keep buying computers with Windows installed. Oracle made their zillions, in part, from actually appealing to the people who know a good database when they see it.

Oracle and the world witnessed this community eat our own, SCO. So I hope they recognize we really do believe in what we preach and will refrain from anything stupid. I think we are a tad apathetic towards Oracle's new toys, but we are watching and a little cautious and so are other people. Had Microsoft tried to buy Sun, we would have drawn guns cocked and loaded, Oracle... we checked to see if we had ammo and sat down to see what happens.

Re:This won't happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

You really need to ventilate when you go using spray paint.

Re:This won't happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle isn't going to let Mysql die. They'll develop it, make it work great and take all the cool things and put it in their Flagship database. Then they will try to upsell you which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

As far as their war chest Oracle has been on a acquisition spree for the last 5 years, they will continue to buy companies they think have value and will work well with their products. I don't see them stopping until they suddenly lose money and with the market down the last 2 years it's a win/win situation.

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not fooling anyone. You can be replaced by about 10 MS Word templates.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[styrotech]

So far as shareholders are concerned, investing in the destruction of one's competition is always justifiable.

I doubt even Oracle would think that is a good idea.

If Oracle managed to drive a lot of potential customers off using open source by stifling those projects, I suspect the majority of the customers would be driven further into Microsofts arms rather than Oracles. After all those customers are more likely to already be MS customers than Oracle customers.

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that negative (infinity squared) or (negative infinity) squared?

You sound like a worse salesperson than him

[Anonymous Coward]

there's a reason oracle bought mysql; it's the superior product bar none. And it takes high paying DBA jobs away from oracle admins.

Re:You sound like a worse salesperson than him

[jmcvetta]

there's a reason oracle bought mysql; it's the superior product bar none. And it takes high paying DBA jobs away from oracle admins.

Huh? The good grace of the gods has mostly spared me ever having to deal with Oracle. But I can say with certainty that MySQL choked (i.e. reverted to a seq scan of ~70m rows) on my wussy little 50-line machine-generated queries. (PostgreSQL likes them just fine.) As much as I hate Oracle & Ellison for ideological reasons, I just cannot imagine the Oracle SQL engine choking on a modestly-big query like that.

Quick question

[lennier1]

While they're at it why don't they buy SCO as well and end that crap too?

Re:Quick question

[mqduck]

Because it's much more fun watching SCO go bankrupt.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[Raenex]

Busybox cases are not GPL cases, they are straightforward software piracy cases

What are you talking about? BusyBox developers sued to enforce the GPL (release of source code).

Buying marketshare

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle already has products in every space they want, and because of aquisitions in some cases they have multiple products that compete in the same space.

I dont see any reason why Oracle would buy open source companies unless those companies have market share and give oracle a leg up in that space. Like say Spring Source. In reality if oracle wanted to buy programmers that's what they would buy (or hire)

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[Anonymous Coward]

An invalid GPL would just make all formerly GPL'd code simply copyrighted to the original authors, with no license for anyone else to use. Every company in a Berne-signatory country would be violators, and subject to massive lawsuits. Even if the GPL is flawed in some way, invalidating it is less likely than adjusting legislation in 36 countries to re-validate it: just to avoid the lawsuits that would result.

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[icebraining]

And by three redundant VBScript function. (Well, two redundant - one must exist).

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[Anonymous Coward]

[Ellison and 2 goons smashing your equipment]
Gordonjcp: What are you doing?!
Ellison: I'm buying you out. Don't let the haircut fool you; I'm exceedingly wealthy.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[ScrewMaster]

No argument. But like I said, what we're talking about here is pretty much exactly what Microsoft has done (and IBM before it, just ask a man named Amdahl) and I'm sure Oracle has done a few nasty things in that line along the way as well. Once you get big enough, squelching or otherwise eliminating competition is ruthless at best, but pretty common in the corporate sector. And Ellison is nothing if not ruthless. I'm not saying this is even on Oracle's radar, but that corporate is hardly above something like it.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[ScrewMaster]

So far as shareholders are concerned, investing in the destruction of one's competition is always justifiable.

I doubt even Oracle would think that is a good idea.

If Oracle managed to drive a lot of potential customers off using open source by stifling those projects, I suspect the majority of the customers would be driven further into Microsofts arms rather than Oracles. After all those customers are more likely to already be MS customers than Oracle customers.

Sure, and I'm not claiming that this would be in Oracle's best interests. I am saying that killing off competition (especially potential competition) has always been a part of the business world.

Look what you guys have done!

[eclectro]

Steps for world domination the open source way;

1) Get one of your employees to ask the friendly open source community on Slashdot how they would implement a massive takeover plan.

2) Implement said plan as posted with your deep pocket resources.

3) Own every open source software worth mentioning.

$) Profit!!!

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[davester666]

Yes, the bidders have hacked into his bank accounts, checked his credit score and credit card balances, frequency of payments on his loans, to arrive at the value of their bids.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[jmcvetta]

Idealism is wonderful, but it doesn't pay the rent.

Maybe your rent is too high?

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[jonbryce]

They don't sue for release of the source code, as they can't force that. They sue for monetary damages for copyright infringement then offer to drop the case in return for release of source code. In every case I'm aware of, the defendant has agreed to release the source code.

The GPL is a licence which gives you permission to copy provided you meet certain conditions. If you don't agree to those conditions, then basic copyright law applies - you can't copy at all except where it is covered by fair use, so if you don't comply, it becomes a software piracy case. This is strengthened by the fact that if you copy without complying with the GPL, then according to the GPL you lose the rights to copy under its terms, so it continues to be software piracy even if you release the source code later, so as part of the settlement, the Busybox developer will agree to waive the loss of rights clause in respect of previous violations.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[mpe]

Unless they used some of that 10 billion dollars to have the GPL declared invalid, or something to that effect. Yes, it's nonsensical, but $10 billion can help finance a lot of campaigns, plenty of astroturfers, and an army of lawyers, so I'm not so sure they couldn't do it.

How much would it cost to but the entire music and "movie" industries (probably quite a few proprietary software companies too) together with their existing (worldwide) copyright lobbying system? Who would otherwise oppose a "new kid" on "their turf"...

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[mpe]

Declaring the GPL invalid doesn't help Cisco use Busybox without the copyright owner's permission.

They are free to use the software, since the GPL is not an EULA. The GPL is primarily concerned with distribution to third parties. Anyone, including the largest "corporate people" on the planet, can run whatever GPL software they like without there being an issue.

The Busybox cases are not GPL cases, they are straightforward software piracy cases just the same as the guy who sells dodgy copies of Microsoft Office at car boot sales.

Whilst there's no difference with the sellers here there is a difference between the buyers. If you buy a "dodgy copy" (assuming there is any other kind) of Microsoft Office then you are also a "pirate".
If you acquire a pirated copy of any GPL software then you are free to make use of it. You only become a pirate if you start distributing to others without complying with the GPL. There are also situations such as corporate mergers where such "piracy" may only briefly exist. Copyright holders tend to be most concerned with commercial pirates though.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[mpe]

The GPL is a licence which gives you permission to copy provided you meet certain conditions. If you don't agree to those conditions, then basic copyright law applies - you can't copy at all except where it is covered by fair use, so if you don't comply, it becomes a software piracy case. This is strengthened by the fact that if you copy without complying with the GPL, then according to the GPL you lose the rights to copy under its terms,

Actually where the GPL applies is passing a copy to another party. You can make as many copies as you like, whatever kind of entity "you" might be, so long as applicable law considers you to be a "person" or equivalent.

Would they buy slashdot?

[Rsriram]

And will commandertaco make money?

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[tehcyder]

Open source is not a finite resource.

So it's an infinite resource? I can use it as the power source for my perpetual motion machine then.

Oracle Managment

[helix2301]

Oracle is know for there management they know what they are going to do with these companies before they buy them. There management is aggressive and they know what the mission statement and vision is for the company. This is the reason for Oracle success plus there development of open source products and improvement of these products has been legendary over the years.

New licences needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

they're going after education. I brought this point up with a friend last night while having a beer. The importance, and dependence our current society has on IT is immense and can't be underestimated. Children should be learning about open source in secondary school / high school. They're not. This is a dangerous situation, especially if OSS ceases to be... You can take the health of OSS and make a direct analog to the health of the education system in these times. It strikes me as being a matter of some importance that we move as many projects onto licenses which forbid corporate takeover. Are there such licenses? Clearly the GPL is not doing it's job if it allows the development project to become corporate. If Linux were to be taken over by corporate interests, technology will have moved out of the hands of the people and into the hands of the corporate agenda. If that happens to Unix as well, we could lose the ability to educate our children as anything more than serfs / slaves of sorts.

Re:New licences needed?

[segin]

Earth to AC: We never left the Middle Ages, the obviousness of the existence of "upper", "middle" and "lower" classes are an example of this; everything not the top 1% that constitutes the "upper" class is a proverbial slave, except the situation has been extremely skewed to make it neigh impossible to argue that it is slavery or serfdom, since people have a false sense and expression of freedom sufficient to mask any possible viewpoint other than "freedom". TL;DR: If you're not rich, you're a slave, no matter how free you think you are.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[Raenex]

I see what you're saying. I was a bit confused when you said these were "not GPL" cases, as they certainly are. I agree that if there is no GPL on the source, then re-distributing it without permission is a software piracy case. However, there is one major difference between open source and closed source copyrighted software sold for commercial advantage: economic damage. The artistic license was tied up for years in court around this issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobsen_v._Katzer

Yeah, right. Everybody thinks they know

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed Oracle isn't doing very well these days. Larry should run a Slashdot poll and ask for guidance. Right.

Re:More FOSS would fork from the bought up project

[Anonymous Coward]

He who has the gold makes the rules.

YGOTAS Seto Kaiba: "Screw the rules, I have money!"

Yep, and there would be plenty of others waiting..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, and there would be plenty of others waiting to step in and take their place

With those incentives why wouldn't there be?

This is how Oracle destroys MySQL

[TravisO]

You're thinking like a nerd and not like a business person. What really happens is MySQL's main branch turns into crap, your average developer downloads MySQL because they don't know what a fork is and their boss just told them to "try this open source product". It really sucks compared to current commercial offerings because MySQL hasn't been updated in X years. Guess what just happened, unless money was an issue, they probably just decided not to go with OS.

This is what Oracle is hoping for, and imho it will happen, more-so as time goes on. MySQL may seem pretty good right this moment, but what about 2yrs from now, 5yrs, 7yrs? These forks have to make a name for themself, but chances are, the devs have either: quit the project entirely, gotten hired by Oracle and don't work on any OS code/forks anymore, or the senior devs are competiting with each other because they're all working different forks. More likely than not, Oracle has destroyed MySQL.

OSS Programmers get reamed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Working at Oracle means that Oracle owns all of the IP you develop in any product that is aligned with part of their business strategy, whether it be at home or at work.

So if your company got bought by Oracle and the product you had been working on was then owned by Oracle, if an open source fork was then created, any changes you as the new Oracle employee would be owned by Oracle because your employee contract with Oracle gives it ownership of your intellectual property and thus copyright.

If you wanted to work on an open source project, as an employee of Oracle, and to be able to contribute code to the open source project that was not owned by Oracle then you would need to be working on something that was not related to any of its business activities. So far its activities include Linux, BtRFS, MySQL and everything that is in Solaris.

If the OSS developer that you're referring to doesn't mind Oracle owning the copyright to all of the work they do on their new fork, I suppose there would be no problem.

But I suspect that the OSS developer just might because Oracle, not they, owns the new work too.

p.s. law in neither California or anywhere else in the world protects intellectual property that you develop at home from being owned by your employer when it is related to their business activities.

I know this because I recently became an Oracle worker-bee and I've voluntarily stopped contributing to open source projects because at this point I do not want to pollute them with Oracle copyright.

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[jgagnon]

Yes.

Re:Hi. I'm an open-source developer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds good, he just needs to give himself a generous pay-rise and include a hefty termination fee in his employment contract.