[CODE4LIB] can code4lib survive Oracle's takeover of Sun?
I know the answer is yes, but does anyone care to speculate on the impact of Oracle's takeover of Sun, which controls in addition to open source workhorse JAVA, MySQL, OpenOffice, and Netbeans (all of which complete with proprietary products from Oracle). I haven't heard anything quotable recently from Larry Ellison, but he has in the pass been an ardent opponent of OSS and I find it hard to imagine him not taking advantage of this opportunity to place roadblocks and/or booby traps in the way of the OSS community.
Re: [CODE4LIB] can code4lib survive Oracle's takeover of Sun?
On 04/20/2009 10:13 AM, Barnett, Jeffrey wrote: I know the answer is yes, but does anyone care to speculate on the impact of Oracle's takeover of Sun, which controls in addition to open source workhorse JAVA, MySQL, OpenOffice, and Netbeans (all of which complete with proprietary products from Oracle). Meh. I don't know the intricacies of Java or NetBeans, but with MySQL, a non-nurturing environment at Ora-Sun will either lead to a fork handled by someone more invested in it, or a gradual move to PostgreSQL; if that spurs some development to simplify psql, it's arguably a win all around. OO.o development doesn't seem to be in the fast lane as it is, so I'm not sure it could suffer much if Sun bails on it. And isn't IBM contributing at least as much as Sun these days? Maybe it needs something like this to shake it up. -- Thomas Dowling tdowl...@ohiolink.edu
[CODE4LIB] can code4lib survive Oracle's takeover of Sun?
Barnett, Jeffrey writes: I know the answer is yes, but does anyone care to speculate on the impact of Oracle's takeover of Sun, which controls in addition to open source workhorse JAVA, MySQL, OpenOffice, and Netbeans (all of which complete with proprietary products from Oracle). I haven't heard anything quotable recently from Larry Ellison, but he has in the pass been an ardent opponent of OSS and I find it hard to imagine him not taking advantage of this opportunity to place roadblocks and/or booby traps in the way of the OSS community. I foresee a forkfest. Which of course is the beauty of Free Software: even if the copyright is acquired by an Evil Empire, they can't stop us from continuing to develop from the last freely-released version onwards. There will still be Java, MySQL, OpenOffice and (I suppose it can't be avoided) NetBeans -- the only questions is how much Oracle proposes to involve themselves in the maintenance and development process. _/|____ /o ) \/ Mike Taylorm...@indexdata.comhttp://www.miketaylor.org.uk )_v__/\ Stay tuned for exciting news about chicken zygapophyses -- Matt Wedel.
Re: [CODE4LIB] can code4lib survive Oracle's takeover of Sun?
The user community for these products is WAY bigger than code4lib, naturally. If Oracle manages to mess them up, then the user community will fork, or migrate to different products, and we will follow. Fortunately we are not alone here, there are giant communities formed around these open source products, which will keep using open source products to fill those functions one way or another, and we'll go with them. Not to imply that a custodial company who wanted to couldn't make things very inconvenient in the short to medium term, sure. But it's just speculation at this point, I don't see any reason to get alarmed. And one way or another, it'll work out in the end. Jonathan Barnett, Jeffrey wrote: I know the answer is yes, but does anyone care to speculate on the impact of Oracle's takeover of Sun, which controls in addition to open source workhorse JAVA, MySQL, OpenOffice, and Netbeans (all of which complete with proprietary products from Oracle). I haven't heard anything quotable recently from Larry Ellison, but he has in the pass been an ardent opponent of OSS and I find it hard to imagine him not taking advantage of this opportunity to place roadblocks and/or booby traps in the way of the OSS community.
Re: [CODE4LIB] can code4lib survive Oracle's takeover of Sun?
IBM has an RDBMS horse in the OSS race (Called Derby). It doesn't seem to have much of a following. I imagine they must have forseen the possiblity of an Oracle takeover when they broke off their own acquisition proposal earlier this (?last) year. I agree there is probably more to come. That's why I posed the question. Netbeans is probably in the weakest position. It already has strong OSS competition from Eclipse (originally IBM sponsored), and IBM, Oracle, and uSoft all have in-house IDEs. -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Thomas Dowling Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 10:42 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] can code4lib survive Oracle's takeover of Sun? On 04/20/2009 10:13 AM, Barnett, Jeffrey wrote: I know the answer is yes, but does anyone care to speculate on the impact of Oracle's takeover of Sun, which controls in addition to open source workhorse JAVA, MySQL, OpenOffice, and Netbeans (all of which complete with proprietary products from Oracle). Meh. I don't know the intricacies of Java or NetBeans, but with MySQL, a non-nurturing environment at Ora-Sun will either lead to a fork handled by someone more invested in it, or a gradual move to PostgreSQL; if that spurs some development to simplify psql, it's arguably a win all around. OO.o development doesn't seem to be in the fast lane as it is, so I'm not sure it could suffer much if Sun bails on it. And isn't IBM contributing at least as much as Sun these days? Maybe it needs something like this to shake it up. -- Thomas Dowling tdowl...@ohiolink.edu
Re: [CODE4LIB] can code4lib survive Oracle's takeover of Sun?
I don't know if there is anything that can be done about it, but if anyone is interested, I've set up a Facebook group opposing the merger. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=91044005659 --- David Cloutman dclout...@co.marin.ca.us Electronic Services Librarian Marin County Free Library -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:code4...@listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Barnett, Jeffrey Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 7:13 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] can code4lib survive Oracle's takeover of Sun? I know the answer is yes, but does anyone care to speculate on the impact of Oracle's takeover of Sun, which controls in addition to open source workhorse JAVA, MySQL, OpenOffice, and Netbeans (all of which complete with proprietary products from Oracle). I haven't heard anything quotable recently from Larry Ellison, but he has in the pass been an ardent opponent of OSS and I find it hard to imagine him not taking advantage of this opportunity to place roadblocks and/or booby traps in the way of the OSS community. Email Disclaimer: http://www.co.marin.ca.us/nav/misc/EmailDisclaimer.cfm
Re: [CODE4LIB] can code4lib survive Oracle's takeover of Sun?
On Mon, 20 Apr 2009, Cloutman, David wrote: I don't know if there is anything that can be done about it, but if anyone is interested, I've set up a Facebook group opposing the merger. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=91044005659 I doubt that joining a facebook group is going to actually do anything in the matter. If you actually have specific reasons for not wanting the merger, I'm guessing that there's someone to write to at the FTC or DOJ or whatever other government agencies have to approve these mergers. If they decide that the merger would harm competition, they can (must?) reject the merger. - Joe Hourcle Principal Software Engineer Solar Data Analysis Center Goddard Space Flight Center [insert disclaimer here about these being personal comments, and not those of my company or place of work]
