[UFO Chicago] Story Of A Death Foretold -- Oracle And Sleepycat

[Ian Bicking]

Brian Sobolak wrote:
> So I don't know how many of you have seen this:
> 
> <http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/13871708.htm>
> 
> Oracle has purchased Sleepycat, and is considering buying JBoss and Zend
> (the company behind some PHP products).  While I figure the GPL will
> ultimately prevent Oracle from completely destroying these products, I
> have a tough time imagining them being as responsive to community requests
> for features as they have been in the past, not to mention a drop-off in
> contributions because frankly, who wants their contributions to be used by
> Oracle?
> 
> It's interesting to see things develop from geek grassroots to corporate
> superstars, but I see this as a bad trend -- it's hard to get people to
> give up precious free time for something someone else profits from.  In
> bits and pieces, the culture of sharing is being bought.

I predict this will cause a bloom of such small companies, because now 
they have something to shoot for -- compete with Oracle and they will 
pay you cash money!  Well, maybe stock money, I don't know the details.

Zend has always been iffy on the FOSS aspect; I doubt the move to Oracle 
will make it any worse.  Any commercial support company provides a very 
different kind of community support compared to a self-organized 
community; having them bought doesn't necessarily mean they'll do any worse.

-- 
Ian Bicking  /  ianb at colorstudy.com  /  http://blog.ianbicking.org