It’s no surprise that the executive director of the Linux Foundation would see good news for Linux in the unexpected announcement this morning of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, but I do feel it necessary to shed some light on how it may or may not affect Linux.
- Oracle is strategically aligned with Linux: Oracle is a Linux distributor, and all its products are developed and run on Linux. As Edward Screven, chief architect of Oracle, said in a keynote at our Collaboration Summit two weeks ago, “entering the Linux market was the right choice for Oracle.” They are also a major user: Oracle’s entire enterprise runs on Linux, and they are major contributors to the Linux kernel among other Linux projects.
- While Oracle specifically is calling out the software assets and upside in this deal, specially the acquisition of Java and Solaris, this does not mean they will lessen their support for Linux. In fact Oracle’s support for Linux is so crucial to the company, they felt it useful to say in the official press release that they will continue to be “committed as ever to Linux.”
- Oracle is first and foremost an applications and business software vendor, meaning they need to support the OS that the customer wishes to deploy their software on. Solaris has traditionally been a very popular OS choice for the Oracle DB. This acquisition makes a lot of sense for Oracle to fine tune Solaris for their products, but it certainly will not lessen the support or investment Oracle has in Linux. This isn’t a zero sum game. Much like IBM or HP who continue to build out their Linux businesses while sustaining their Unix investments, it’s about granting customers choice and making sure your software is optimized to run on the OS of their choice. In fact, Sun has an existing Linux business that has been growing in recent years.
- Oracle is a key supporter of open standards such as ODF and we believe this only strengthens that stance. This acquisition could prove fruitful for Open Office and ODF support in the enterprise. Both Oracle and Sun’s commitments to open standards based products and services that enable customer choice and effective integration amongst the variety of technology it takes to run a business is a win for technology consumers.
Both Sun and Oracle are members of the Linux Foundation, with Oracle a prominent supporter of the Foundation with its platinum membership. We look forward to working with the combined company to further the growth of open source, open standards, and Linux.
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Yes but what will be the outcome for MySQL? Maybe it’s time to work more on the alternative version like MariaDB…
I am more concern about things like community management, actual non-enterprise application support such as OpenOffice.org.
Then again is the angle on why did they purchased Sun? Was it because of their FLOSS portafolio or their hardware/storage market.
This will prove what things are nurtured and what things are killed.
I wonder how friendly is Oracle with the MySQL community for example.
What nobody is talking about yet as things sink in is that the acquisition of Sun could be a monopolistic practice. With no real other database vendors out there Oracle will have the only foothold on a very very lucrative business. I’m not saying if I think this idea is good or bad but i am saying that this should really be thought about.
A survey conducted by Citigroup amongst major institutional investors provided the following insight on todays markets:
The favored sector is Tech and this sector has held the top position over the last 12 months. Growth stocks are also a hot item of late, the market sees the economy in a more positive view for the second half ofthe year and this should bode well for growth stocks. An additional upside of 6% is expected from current market levels to the end of the year. The majority of this optimism is due to the market rally since March, investors believe the market has bottomed. Regardless of the expected drop (approximately 20%) in earnings this year, a common consensus is the rebound in 2010 will be in the double digits. I’m certain Oracle has this information in mind prior to its acquisition.
With the acquisition of Sun - Oracle has come a full circle with its offering.
Now the question in everyone’s mind - What happens to MySQL. I am sure it will continue to be nurtured, promoted and all that. Will it be done with fair practices? Why not donate Mysql to Linux community or Apache foundation or better still promote Mysql as an independent organization?
Why Linux ?
It is proven beyond an iota of doubt - How to manage community software platform with Linux? In the world of Light (LAMP) M is a very important member.
Oraclians - please donate Mysql to Linux Foundation!!
Thanks
Sudhi
(OT for Linux, but responding to other commenters)
A useful thing to keep in mind here is that Larry Ellison really, really hates Microsoft. And now he has Java (the thing .NET is a shoddy copy of) and OpenOffice.org, two of Microsoft’s greatest fears. Somehow I think both projects are going to be fine.
[…] # Jim Zemlin on what the acquisition means for Linux. […]
ZFS on Linux please?