I think some of you are notorious pessimists.
Oracle has contributed very much to the Open Source already (think of the ADF contribution to the Apache Foundation), and it has pushed MySQL in the past by giving them InnoDB. It is still pushing Php and other open technologies and do not forget that Oracle has named Open Source Unixes like Linux and Open Solaris their strategic platforms, which helped especially Linux vendors very much (although Oracle Linux has only little market share compared to Red Hat and Novell) and which has even helped to damage the #1 Unix vendor Sun very much. Now they will not need to do that anymore, they can use the best technologies instead of need to compete against them.
I wouldn't expect Oracle to kill any of the Open Source products they own, rather I expect them to be able to make revenue with it. And that is absolutely legal and morally correct. They have to feed nearly 100.000 employed people and their families and they are liable for the quality of their products.
As some of you said, Open Source is not everything. I go further and say, it only makes sense if it is integrated in the value creation chain.
Some said, IBM would have been a better recepton camp for MySQL.
NO, IBM is not the advocate of the Open Source community. Just the opposite.
They just use the community as cheap labour to compete against companies who still invent own things with own employees. And although IBM had invented many things in the past (but not half as much as one of you said, it i.e. was DEC, who invented most of the dialogue orientated computing. the client server paradigm and clusters and things we are using nowadays and Xerox and Apple and Sun and so on, but not IBM), todays IBM has thinned out their own technological divisions very much, by selling most of these things they had invented to China and other countries which provide cheap labour. Mind, they are not like others, building new divisions in these countries. No they preferred to sell everything to China, not being liable for the work conditions there and not being liable for product quality, environmental compliances and so on. But their main reason was, that technology in general is not creating revenue fast enough and that labour is not anymore regarded as valueable. This means IBM just neglects all ideals most of the Open Source people have. IBM is no more than a bank today. They act like a bank would act. Their boss is a banker not a technologist. All their strategies are typical banker's strategies, heading for one thing: abolish competitors , abolish free market, abolish thinking customers with own IT staff, turning customers into addicts. And occasional good deeds are just done for positive publicity. If they would have been able to to have it their way always, we would still be using punch tapes or punch cards, believe me. Don't take my word for it, there are many books about IBM, which are worth reading. I especially like reading about their entanglement with the Nazis and their assistance with the annihilation of millions of people.
That is long ago, but somehow IBM still smells of it, more than any other company in the world. You can see their hidden ideals also from their effort in artificial intelligence projects. They are still trying to invent the Superman, like Nietzsche and Hitler did. Some kind of humanoid maybe, that is only wanting to use z/OS and punch cards and that is happy to annihilate all the normal human beings to achieve that great benefaction.
12-11-2009
Time will show, and hopefully those opponents will be refuted
