IT Curmudgeon

In a surprise to most observers, Oracle beat bidder IBM for Sun MicroSystems and completed the purchase on Monday, 4/20/2009.

Many observers are left wondering what this will mean for their IT shops. Notably, the sale may affect MySQL, PostGreSQL, Java, and Open Office. These concerns are raised largely because Oracle has not developed a strong track record for supporting open source software, as has IBM.

Open source code trees like MySQL and PostGreSQL might be seen as taking market share from Oracle, and so there may be internal pressure to kill or starve them. They would likely be switched to another open source development group if this happened.

The licensing for Open Office and Java are different though, since they are not straight open source licenses. What Oracle will decide to do and what will happen to them are up in the air. Some are fearful, though that java users might get a demand for license fees, which would dramatically change the configuration and financing of many IT shops overnight.

Shops where there is a strong reliance on Java and open source for web or SOA applications, for example, have just seen the FUD index go up dramatically.

There is some skepticism that the Oracle-Sun deal will not close, so some of us are hoping for a revisit of the IBM-Sun arrangement, which could be thought of as a better fit due to the extensive investment in the open source market that IBM has made to date.