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The deal is done. Oracle now owns Sun. Oracle's message to Sun customers seems to be "Don't worry, be happy." That is not easy when Oracle is unable to explain in detail what it will do with open-source software offerings, such as MySQL, OpenOffice, and OpenSolaris. |
Overall, we know that Sun's catalog of software products will be reduced and that many Sun employees will soon be laid off. Historically, when Oracle acquires a company, deep cuts are the rule. For example, Oracle laid off about 5.000 workers after the PeopleSoft acquisition. On this occasion, Oracle made it known that there will only be a thousand layoffs. In particular, although no one has said it "on the record," it is feared that the "open-source" sectors within Sun are the ones bearing the brunt of these cuts.
As of yet, no one from Oracle wants to make "official" statements about what will happen to Sun's "open-source" software. We know that at least one small open source project, the Wonderland project, a Java-based platform for developing 3-D virtual worlds, has been decommissioned. In addition, Oracle will close the Kenai project, a hosting site for free and open source programs.
When it comes to code openness for large projects, after talking to people close to Oracle, no one at Sun knows what Oracle has in mind, and Oracle doesn't even say "mu."
MySQL founder Monty 'Michael' Widenius was a leader against Oracle's acquisition of Sun. His opposition to the deal was to no avail, however by having the European Commission keep a close eye on Oracle and its MySQL plans, I think that, in the short term at least, Widenius and his allies have ensured that MySQL will disappear. under the other proprietary database software offerings, also held by Oracle. Just too much attention is now focused on MySQL for Oracle to try to kill it.
In any case, long before the deal took place, Widenius had developed its own open source MySQL, MariaDB. So regardless of what Oracle ends up doing with MySQL, the MySQL database code will continue.
OpenOffice appears to be the most secure of Sun's major open source projects. Oracle has no competing products with OpenOffice in its existing software line, and the company has said it will continue to support OpenOffice. The questions here are real in the details. We know that Oracle plans to offer a SaaS (software as a service), a version of OpenOffice in the cloud, but we have no idea when or how we will see it. Meanwhile, a new version of OpenOffice, version 3.2, is available for download.
OpenSolaris, on the other hand, has the darkest future. While Oracle said Solaris will continue to be supported, hardly a word has been said about OpenSolaris.
It doesn't help at all that Oracle uses Linux to save OpenSolaris. Although not known outside of business circles, Oracle is also a Linux distributor. Oracle created Oracle Unbreakable Linux, a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), and distributes it to its customers with a paid option for technical support, and worldwide as an unsupported Linux distribution.
Anyway, I strongly suspect that while Solaris SPARC will continue, OpenSolaris for x86 will disappear. What I think Oracle will end up doing, as Oracle is a major contributor to the Linux kernel, is taking some of the OpenSolaris code and merging it with Linux.
If OpenSolaris, as a standalone operating system, has any chance of survival, I suspect the only real possibility is a fork maintained by an independent community of developers. I find it very difficult for Oracle to actually allocate resources to OpenSolaris. Sorry people.
Seen in | Computer World (Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols)