Re: Oracle buying Sleepycat, JBoss, and

On Fri, 2006-02-10 at 11:41, Luke Lonergan wrote:
> Bruce,
>
> On 2/10/06 8:27 AM, "Bruce Momjian" <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>
> > What they are _not_ getting involved in is software that is community
> > controlled, like PostgreSQL or Linux, because it much harder to see how
> > a purchase would allow tight control of the software, resulting in
> > revenue.
>
> True.

Or tight control resulting in killing the competition. Even with the
death of great bridge, postgresql kept on going, and I'd say there is no
company currently that has as much sway as great bridge did "way back
when"

>
> I think it's clear they're going after applications again - buying many
> proven foundational elements of a software development stack in one gulp.
> What I wonder is what their next step might be - did they do this (and
> InnoDB) to remove competition? Or do they expect to somehow monetize a new
> stack?
>

My opinion is it's all about eliminating competition. InnoDB and JBoss
don't give them code that is substantially different in a market effect
sense, and sleepycat has only marginal value in the embedded space
compared to the $$ oracle gets in the enterprise rdbms market. However
killing JBoss would kill a competitor, and getting sleepycat puts an
even tighter grip on mysql. Of course I haven't figured out where
PHP/Zend fits into this... maybe to help make php/mysql less
ubiquitous.

> Is Oracle trying to become an open source company?
>

At best they are trying to become a services company like IBM, but I
still think they are just trying to slow down competition.

Robert Treat
--
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