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One day (if not already) they'll be a Harvard Business School case-study of how corporations can create value through strategic use of Open Source communities.

by mdda 16y ago

One day (if not already) they'll be a Harvard Business School case-study of how corporations can create value through strategic use of Open Source communities. And it'll probably be centered on Oracle : OpenOffice just 'got away', Java is looking a little frayed around the corners. MySQL has got to be the one they're most concerned about - and they plainly haven't yet got a grasp of how important 'playing nice' is to people that can be inspired/swayed by idealism. It always used to be 'nobody ever got fired for buying IBM' - and maybe Oracle sees itself in the same way for databases. But it must be realizing that it's subtly being moved from the obvious choice on a list of three options, to just one of the three options...

billybob 16y ago
Oracle's Hudson CI was also forked to Jenkins CI and the original developers went with it. Anecdotally, I've had conversations with people who are looking into PostgreSQL as a MySQL alternative specifically because Oracle now owns MySQL and its future seems uncertain. So I agree that right now, it looks like Oracle is flailing around and missing the potential of open source.
- runningdogx 16y ago
  MySQL already has three maintained patchsets or complete forks, and there's no reason to believe any of them would die if Oracle stopped open sourcing MySQL tomorrow. Percona Server and MariaDB are drop-in compatible, while Drizzle went in a different direction. All three projects have some pre-Oracle MySQL developers working on them. Far be it from me to discourage someone from adopting Postgresql instead of MySQL, but there are other options that retain compatibility with mysql-only apps.
omouse 16y ago
One day (if not already) they'll be a Harvard Business School case-study of how corporations can create value through strategic use of Open Source communities. Yeah, that's just what we need, more money polluting the free software community. The only reason there's a fork and lots of duplicate efforts is because of poor behaviour of corporations. You can't make that much money from free/open source and you can't force it.
- dasil003 16y ago
  The economics need to be better understood. Open source creates a huge amount of value, especially for infrastructure level projects that are in wide use over time. If the licensing and technical architecture are right, this can even lead to huge blooms of profit by the corporate end users. The problem with companies like Oracle is they want to capture their piece of all that value, but in doing so they have a chilling effect on the value creation itself.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - sovande 16y ago
    open source magic -> "huge blooms of profit by the corporate end users". What most open source users do not understand is that someone is paying for that magic part. In this case it is Oracle (somewhat by proxy) and I see nothing wrong in that oracle is trying to get some return of the investment.
    - dasil003 16y ago
      There's nothing ethically wrong with it, it's just that they don't get open source and the long term value that it provides. The best part of awesome open source software is the ability to build even awesomer stuff on top. Oracle sees it as a revenue source to be harvested; in general their business model is not about building awesomer and awesomer things, it's about maximizing the cash value of what they have. The best corporate sponsorships of open source are when the interests of the company sponsoring are aligned with making the open source software as good as possible. That is, the software is not a threat to parent company, but rather something that they want to be as good as possible because it enhances their product, and they're willing to let other people use it in order to help make it better. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with what Oracle does, but at the same time, it behooves users of Oracle's open source software to be wary that they don't pull the rug out from under you.

by mdda 16y ago

billybob 16y ago

Oracle's Hudson CI was also forked to Jenkins CI and the original developers went with it. Anecdotally, I've had conversations with people who are looking into PostgreSQL as a MySQL alternative specifically because Oracle now owns MySQL and its future seems uncertain. So I agree that right now, it looks like Oracle is flailing around and missing the potential of open source.

runningdogx 16y ago
MySQL already has three maintained patchsets or complete forks, and there's no reason to believe any of them would die if Oracle stopped open sourcing MySQL tomorrow. Percona Server and MariaDB are drop-in compatible, while Drizzle went in a different direction. All three projects have some pre-Oracle MySQL developers working on them. Far be it from me to discourage someone from adopting Postgresql instead of MySQL, but there are other options that retain compatibility with mysql-only apps.

omouse 16y ago

One day (if not already) they'll be a Harvard Business School case-study of how corporations can create value through strategic use of Open Source communities. Yeah, that's just what we need, more money polluting the free software community. The only reason there's a fork and lots of duplicate efforts is because of poor behaviour of corporations. You can't make that much money from free/open source and you can't force it.

dasil003 16y ago
The economics need to be better understood. Open source creates a huge amount of value, especially for infrastructure level projects that are in wide use over time. If the licensing and technical architecture are right, this can even lead to huge blooms of profit by the corporate end users. The problem with companies like Oracle is they want to capture their piece of all that value, but in doing so they have a chilling effect on the value creation itself.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- sovande 16y ago
  open source magic -> "huge blooms of profit by the corporate end users". What most open source users do not understand is that someone is paying for that magic part. In this case it is Oracle (somewhat by proxy) and I see nothing wrong in that oracle is trying to get some return of the investment.
  - dasil003 16y ago
    There's nothing ethically wrong with it, it's just that they don't get open source and the long term value that it provides. The best part of awesome open source software is the ability to build even awesomer stuff on top. Oracle sees it as a revenue source to be harvested; in general their business model is not about building awesomer and awesomer things, it's about maximizing the cash value of what they have. The best corporate sponsorships of open source are when the interests of the company sponsoring are aligned with making the open source software as good as possible. That is, the software is not a threat to parent company, but rather something that they want to be as good as possible because it enhances their product, and they're willing to let other people use it in order to help make it better. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with what Oracle does, but at the same time, it behooves users of Oracle's open source software to be wary that they don't pull the rug out from under you.