Shuttleworth: Oracle now largest open source player
Summary: Oracle's planned acquisition of Sun not only makes it a hardware giant but also a huge open source player, Ubuntu's founder said.On Monday, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and Ubuntu Linux, said the deal makes Oracle one of the largest if not the largest open source software player.
Oracle's planned acquisition of Sun not only makes it a hardware giant but also a huge open source player, Ubuntu's founder said.
On Monday, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and Ubuntu Linux, said the deal makes Oracle one of the largest if not the largest open source software player.
And he doesn't seem too worried that the proprietary software company will kill Sun's open source Java, OpenSolaris and MySQL jewels, in spite of Oracle's hold on the database market.
"I'm sure Oracle has carefully thought through everything it committed [itself] to [and] there will be no reversal of the idea that Java should be widely available and available as open source," Shuttleworth said during a press conference today to launch ubuntu 9.04 upgrade.
"It's a one-way trip," Canonical chief said about the process of making software open source. "What is interesting [about the Oracle-Sun deal] is that it really cements the idea that free and open source software is the profound driving force in software today. "
He noted that 80 percent of all software revenues go to just five companies -- and one of them just bought Sun, the "world's biggest free and open source software company" for a whopping $6 billion. "Part of the reason is that open source is dominating the innovation pipeline," Shuttleworth said. "It cements the idea that open source and free software is the big game. What [SAP, Microsoft and other large proprietary software companies] can't do is ignore it."
Sun and Canonical cooperated but Shuttleworth was not ready to say what relationship with Oracle will be. Java is integrated with Ubuntu.
"It's far too early to tell," Shuttleworth said when asked.
It's too early to tell what Oracle really has in mind with its mega purchase of Sun. Acquiring hardware and Sun's customers is a big win, of course. Giving Microsoft a scare -- and a big run for its money -- has got to be another major angle. Aside from its Java toolset and open source database, Oracle now has OpenOffice -- the big competitor to Microsoft Office.
But will Oracle pump as much money into MySQL as it has its own databases? Is Oracle's open source intentions sincere, or an effort to kill off its most dangerous open source threat?
Only time will tell. But it's a huge move for the largest enterprise applications player, a sure fire survival card and a substantial win against rivals like Microsoft, IBM, SAP.
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Talkback
Um...largest HOW???
RE: Shuttleworth: Oracle now largest open source player
It would seem, Oracle will go after service contracts...etc for the money...
just look at it, what have the contributed to the OpenSource Community Lately?
Dont forget Java, which I cant see them killing this off, the Web wouldn"t work.
Allot of Apss wouldnt work either, So. java should be safe.
I was really look into OpenSolaris... But now...I will just wait and see.... Will no more in a few months.
Not sure how....
?What is interesting [about the Oracle-Sun deal] is that it really cements the idea that free and open source software is the profound driving force in software today.?
Seems like a hell of a stretch to me to think that a proprietary company is buying Sun because OSS is so important today. I fail to see this.
Best Hopes? Wishful Thinking? Playing to the Base?
You can't kill open source; it will just fork and go on.
If he 'breaks' the parts, he risks not meeting that objective.
So, his bed of open source flowers should be nurtured or he risks having the key players run for the doors and fork a new branch (.e.g., MariaDB).
Java has simply flourished because folks like IBM were emboldened to create development tools like Rational that ultimately they open sourced into Eclipse and we have a healthy programming culture centered around Eclipse IDE (and other Eclipse plugins for languages like C++, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby)--all in spite of SUN's intransigence to support Eclipse and stay with Netbeans.
I hope that Oracle will be as emboldened as IBM was and make sure not to bungle managing what they have just acquired. Maybe they have learned much from their 'Unbreakable Linux' experience to help them orientate to the way things are or 'should' be done.
OpenOffice.org is a perfect example of open source innovation--although SUN hold onto StarOffice separately, much of its development has come from outside of SUN, most notable contributors include Novell. OO.org can with the right management style become even better.
Regardless of the outcome, open source will never die!
It will just fork and go on and on....
Dietrich T. Schmitz
Twitter @dtschmitz
RE: Shuttleworth: Oracle now largest open source player