Sun Acquired By Oracle
Well, it's official, Sun has been acquired by Oracle.
What does this mean for open source software? Well, I'm not really sure. I'll try tapping it what I think below:
MySQL:
Oracle has absolutely nothing to gain from killing MySQL (but again, they already have a very good database system, so they have little to gain from continuing development) as there are already copius forks which provide ample opportunity for alternative commercial development (I love open source like that :) You always have loyal devotees).
OpenSolaris:
Oracle has a number of their systems deployed on Solaris servers, but they also have a lot to gain by freeing up some of the licensing for things like ZFS and DTrace to put them into Linux. Continuing the OpenSolaris project would probably be good in that they'll get free development, but I would believe that beyond that I'd see little benefit if they already have ZFS
OpenSPARC:
As much as I like SPARC, alternative architectures are increasing market share to the point where all else is irrelevant. Fujitsu recently closed down their SPARC manufacturing, so I have a feeling that Oracle may follow suit here
Java:
Oracle has a huge stake in Java middleware, and will likely increase the community involvement in development. This is good news and may see Java evolve faster to keep up with other alternatives. (On this note, I constantly hear references to Java at uni, normally of the type 'C# is Java without all the shit bits' or 'D pisses all over Java's broken corpse'. I don't agree with the C# comment, but D is a VERY good language. Java has some fighting to do if it wants to survive)
NetBeans:
NetBeans goes hand in hand with Java (and web based :D) development, though with a company like Oracle that hasn't got a particularly good standing with the open source community it's a bit uncertain whether we will see this continue as is, become a fully community driven project or whether it will fall behind while Eclipse (*spit*) continues with support from IBM
I'm probably off the mark with a lot of this, so I appreciate any comments from people who have a better idea of what's going to happen
Posted at 10:55AM Apr 23, 2009 by Stephen Gream in Personal | Comments[4]
I can't find any indication of Fujitsu stopping the production SPARC64 chips or systems. They sell a lot of SPARC-based systems in Asia.
Their contract with Sun is reported to cover a 20 year commitment.
Did I miss something?
Texas Instruments stopped making UltraSPARC chips this year. Is that what's benhind your statement here?
Posted by Dave McDorman on April 23, 2009 at 11:17 AM EST #
There are lots of "good" languages over there, but make themselves up to the "mainstream" is a totally different story.
Posted by javaguy on April 23, 2009 at 12:36 PM EST #
"I would believe that beyond that I'd see little benefit if they already have ZFS"
Actually owning the rights to an operating system rather than their current situation with their Red Hat fork (unbreakable) is a big difference, I get the feeling that Oracle will in fact keep Solaris/OpenSolaris running status quo. There is a lot to be said for being able to steer the course rather than having the community steer the course for you
Posted by Che Kristo on April 23, 2009 at 12:44 PM EST #
<i>There are lots of "good" languages over there, but make themselves up to the "mainstream" is a totally different story.</i>
Can't argue with that. Java has the entrenched share of the market, but it will need to change to keep up with the current market. I would like to see it become a lot faster, personally, and maybe have some extensions which remove a lot of boiler plate. For example, I wrote a program in Java to give me a random chosen proper noun from a text file, replace a couple of characters with similar non-alphanumeric ones and then append a random three digit number on the end. The same thing in python was 1/3 of the size. I know, this kind of thing is python's niche, but it just goes to show that there is some pretty stiff competition
<i>I can't find any indication of Fujitsu stopping the production SPARC64 chips or systems. They sell a lot of SPARC-based systems in Asia.</i>
Someone stopped SPARC production... *Googles* Hmm, on second thought, it may have just been the mass production of them. I could quite possibly have been wrong here, as I remember reading it ages ago (maybe 1 or 2 years?), so maybe something else changed and I missed it
<i>Actually owning the rights to an operating system rather than their current situation with their Red Hat fork (unbreakable) is a big difference, I get the feeling that Oracle will in fact keep Solaris/OpenSolaris running status quo. There is a lot to be said for being able to steer the course rather than having the community steer the course for you</i>
That's true. I also just read Oracle's side of it, apparently it's going to be business as usual so I guess OpenSolaris is here to stay :)
Posted by Stephen Gream on April 23, 2009 at 04:50 PM EST #