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I really wish it had been IBM. IBM's investment in Java, open source, free tools, etc... has historically been stellar. Oracle, not so much. I would have fel

by modoc 18y ago

I really wish it had been IBM. IBM's investment in Java, open source, free tools, etc... has historically been stellar. Oracle, not so much. I would have felt much better about Java's future if it were in IBMs hands.

jhawk28 18y ago
Of the companies, Oracle is the only one who has ever made really LARGE acquisitions and made them work. It will be interesting to see what Oracle does when they need to start spinning off the different tools that duplicate their functionality. Oracle has been dev friendly with free tools and development environments. You can download their enterprise Oracle database from their website. IBM always seems to charge for their tools.
- modoc 18y ago
  My experience has been the opposite. Yes, you can get Oracle XE on a limited set of platforms (still no OS X support for any current Oracle databases), for free, although the default configs leave a lot to be desired. However that doesn't compare to the large number of free and/or open source Java projects, libraries, tech articles, forums, etc... that IBM has supported. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/ http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/. You also need a registered account to do pretty much anything on Oracle's site, in stark contrast to IBM's developer tools and sites. Also if Oracle's SQL Developer is them being friendly to devs, then I wish they wouldn't:) That thing is one of the ugliest, most prone to crash, DB tools I've ever used.
  - gaius 18y ago
    Not true; you can download 10.2.0.4 for OSX from OTN.
    - modoc 18y ago
      Which just came out on the 9th of April I think, which is how many years late? Also, it doesn't appear to install correctly unless you're running OS X Server. Fine for production, useless for doing development on my laptop with.
- redrobot5050 18y ago
  Its now about "cost-free" tools. The open source community can produce those -- if anything, Eclipse/NetBeans could just be extended with more plugins. Its about open specifications and standards. Sun had been hyping Java 7, but hasn't been going through the Java Community Process to "debug" the spec, and allow for OSS developers (like those at IBM) to develop spec-compliant tools of their own. If Oracle continues down that trend, it will see Java lose its most important asset: a community of developers who believe in open standards.
- neovive 18y ago
  Thinking about these large acquisitions, it's hard to imagine that Oracle now owns Solaris, Java, BEA, Seibel, Peoplesoft, MySQL and of course their own Oracle DB.
  - mattculbreth 18y ago
    And Hyperion
  - vikas5678 18y ago
    I wonder how much influence oracle would have on java with java being open sourced now.
  - miked 18y ago
    And Berkeley DB / Sleepycat.
  - binarycheese 18y ago
    And InnoDB
- Hexstream 18y ago
  Eclipse, that was (one of) the best Java IDE when I was still in Javaland, was originally an IBM project that they've released as open-source and they've been a major contributor to it afterwards. So IBM doesn't always charge for their tools.
tlrobinson 18y ago
And, of course, there's MySQL...

by modoc 18y ago

jhawk28 18y ago

Of the companies, Oracle is the only one who has ever made really LARGE acquisitions and made them work. It will be interesting to see what Oracle does when they need to start spinning off the different tools that duplicate their functionality. Oracle has been dev friendly with free tools and development environments. You can download their enterprise Oracle database from their website. IBM always seems to charge for their tools.

modoc 18y ago
My experience has been the opposite. Yes, you can get Oracle XE on a limited set of platforms (still no OS X support for any current Oracle databases), for free, although the default configs leave a lot to be desired. However that doesn't compare to the large number of free and/or open source Java projects, libraries, tech articles, forums, etc... that IBM has supported. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/ http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/. You also need a registered account to do pretty much anything on Oracle's site, in stark contrast to IBM's developer tools and sites. Also if Oracle's SQL Developer is them being friendly to devs, then I wish they wouldn't:) That thing is one of the ugliest, most prone to crash, DB tools I've ever used.
- gaius 18y ago
  Not true; you can download 10.2.0.4 for OSX from OTN.
  - modoc 18y ago
    Which just came out on the 9th of April I think, which is how many years late? Also, it doesn't appear to install correctly unless you're running OS X Server. Fine for production, useless for doing development on my laptop with.
redrobot5050 18y ago
Its now about "cost-free" tools. The open source community can produce those -- if anything, Eclipse/NetBeans could just be extended with more plugins. Its about open specifications and standards. Sun had been hyping Java 7, but hasn't been going through the Java Community Process to "debug" the spec, and allow for OSS developers (like those at IBM) to develop spec-compliant tools of their own. If Oracle continues down that trend, it will see Java lose its most important asset: a community of developers who believe in open standards.
neovive 18y ago
Thinking about these large acquisitions, it's hard to imagine that Oracle now owns Solaris, Java, BEA, Seibel, Peoplesoft, MySQL and of course their own Oracle DB.
- mattculbreth 18y ago
  And Hyperion
- vikas5678 18y ago
  I wonder how much influence oracle would have on java with java being open sourced now.
- miked 18y ago
  And Berkeley DB / Sleepycat.
- binarycheese 18y ago
  And InnoDB
Hexstream 18y ago
Eclipse, that was (one of) the best Java IDE when I was still in Javaland, was originally an IBM project that they've released as open-source and they've been a major contributor to it afterwards. So IBM doesn't always charge for their tools.

tlrobinson 18y ago

And, of course, there's MySQL...