How Long Will Oracle Stick With Open Source?

snydeq writes "The fact that Oracle has handed over the keys to two major open source projects in recent weeks has some questioning the fate of other prominent open source projects Oracle took on in the wake of its 2010 acquisition of Sun. But while OpenOffice.org and Hudson provided little commercial opportunity for Oracle, it appears that Oracle has plans to keep rein on NetBeans, MySQL, and GlassFish contrary to expectations, analysts contend."

Comments

Why do people keep developing for these guys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stick a fork in it. It's done.

VirtualBox?

[utkonos]

So much talk about MySQL and Ooo etc etc. Why don't I hear anything about VirtualBox? It seems to be one of the best pieces of open source VM software out there.

Re:VirtualBox?

[TheRaven64]

Xen doesn't run on any operating system. It's a type 1 hypervisor, operating systems run on it. VirtualBox is a type 2 hypervisor, it runs on an operating system. There are very few workloads where Xen and VirtualBox are comparable. For server virtualisation, Xen is a clear winner - fast PV devices, live migration, high-availability VMs via redundant copies and so on - but on the desktop VirtualBox performs well, is easy to use, and supports things like 3D pass-through. I'd be hard pressed to think of a single application where both Xen and VirtualBox were serious contenders.

VirtualBox

[Toe, The]

I was surprised when I stumbled across Oracle VirtualBox. It's pretty dang nice, at least for the end-user instance. What's in it for them to support this project?

Re:VirtualBox

[twocows]

I don't know, but they've been doing significant development on it. The interface has radically changed since the last version Sun put out. Or perhaps it's not that they've done significant development, but that the old developers just haven't been hindered by Oracle.

Re:VirtualBox

[Airborne-ng]

Thirding the VirtualBox subject, even if it's ninjaing the thread. I have enjoyed VirtualBox for a couple of years as my solution for virtualizing my Windows systems. As far as I know there is no better (free) solution exists and would hate to see it go.

Reversed

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question should be how long are people going to stick with Oracle controlled projects?

Re:No Oracle Fan

[sourcerror]

The page lists stuff that they inherited from Sun (+Mysql).

I only know about one of their contribution: Toplink.

my prediction is

[FudRucker]

as soon as the cost of R&D and maintenance on their open source products become higher than what revenue they bring in from service & support of said products you can bet they will quickly pull the plug on them...

Re:No Oracle Fan

[Lunix Nutcase]

Hell I would do (almost) anything to undo their acquisition of Sun.

Then you need to go back in time and stop Jonathan Schwartz from becoming CEO and running Sun into the ground.

Oracle bought Sun for MySQL

[JabrTheHut]

Oracle won't release MySQL. MySQL is a long-term, strategic threat to their primary product, Oracle database. 10 years ago in the finance sector in London every database was on Oracle, Sybase, MSSQL or DB2. Even the most noddy little applications got an Oracle or other database license bought for them. Now, only customer-facing services get an Oracle or Sybase license bought for them - the rest got MySQL. That's a lot of money Oracle isn't making any more.

Re:Oracle bought Sun for MySQL

[DragonWriter]

Oracle won't release MySQL. MySQL is a long-term, strategic threat to their primary product, Oracle database.

No, its not.

Now, only customer-facing services get an Oracle or Sybase license bought for them - the rest got MySQL.

You know, Oracle already has a free-for-production-use version of Oracle Database (Oracle Database XE) that has been around longer than they've owned MySQL. It may be true that low-cost (open source or not) database alternatives have reduced the number of licenses Oracle can sell, but Oracle has long ago figured out that it was better off if it was supplying the low-cost alternatives (and thus, using them as a vehicle to push upgrades to its more expensive products, or as vehicles to sell optional services) than if those were provided only by its competitors.

MySQL might eventually get cut because it doesn't have a clear distinct market role for Oracle that isn't better served (from Oracle's perspective) by the existing XE product, but its not getting cut on the basis that the existence of low-cost and/or open-source DBs are a strategic threat to Oracle Database (indeed, keeping MySQL as the most visible open-source DB probably is the best way to keep mindshare off of open-source DBs that have the potential to be a strategic threat to Oracle Database, something PostgreSQL, for instance, stands a lot bigger chance of doing than MySQL does.)

Re:Oracle bought Sun for MySQL

[atomic-penguin]

Oracle XE is a loss leader, not a product. You know thats when you get a taste for free, but it'll cost you an arm and a leg the first time you get some undecipherable ORA-XXXX error. You get a version of Oracle Database limited in a number of ways, XE may legally:

• execute a single instance on a single 32-bit CPU
• allocate a maximum of 1 Gb of RAM
• store a maximum of 4 Gb of data

XE is a free for development use, not production use, version of Oracle Database. It can be used by developers, and educators or students for educational/training purposes. Its also licensed for use by Independent Software Vendors whose product fits within these restrictions and this small footprint.

Re:Because they make money from it?

[tlhIngan]

You'll get a personal and evaluation license only for the interesting bits which are inside the "Expansion pack" : USB-2 support etc.

Also is the community version lacking some features like remote display (regardless of OS) etc.

Otherwise then money - I can imagine that VirtualBox is also a strategic project. The reason why Sun bought it firsthand...

VirtualBox OSE *ALWAYS* had those limitations.

The thing is, Oracle stopped providing two different versions - the GPL'd source version (VirtualBox OSE) and VirtualBox (commercial license). Vbox OSE never had USB 2, Remote Desktop, etc. Ubuntu etc. provided Vbox OSE with didn't have those functions.

Now Oracle just provides the GPL'd version and the GPL'd sources for it. If you want the features that were in the commercially-licensed version of Vbox, you use the expansion pack. This had the advantage that all the distros had an official binary from Oracle, and it oculd be easily upgaded to the commercial one without breaking your current OS's packaging conventions.

In a sense, Vbox 4 is much easier now than Vbox3 was.

Nothing really changed licensing-wise between 3 (Sun) and 4 (Oracle). All the stuff that was in commercially licensed 3 was moved to an expansion pack that was commercially licensed, so instead of having an OSE and commercial versions of Vbox, you just have one. Helps with code maintainance as well, which is always a plus.

And I suppose, if someone wanted to write their own versions of USB2 and RDP (yes, it used RDP, not VNC) server, they could, and it'll be easier on the new architecture.