Re: Oracle's Effort to Hurt Red Hat Has Failed

On Mar 19, 6:10 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro..._at_schestowitz.com> wrote:
>
> Oracle drives rise of open source embedded database
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Oracle acquired Berkeley DB's originator, Sleepycat, in February
> | 2006, provoking speculation that it was moving to close down
> | some of the open source competition that was eating at its market
> | share. Instead, Oracle has provided a commercially licensed version
> | alongside the open source project.
> `----
>
> http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/03/15/222420/oracle-drive...http://tinyurl.com/2a35nd
>

Oracle cannot shut down the Berkeley DB database, as they don't even own it. The most they could do -arguably, and in theory- would be to build on it and convert *future* versions of it into proprietary. As opposed to closed source code software, an "acquisition" cannot be retroactive to all the code that has been written in the past. That's the beauty of OSS: anyone can legally take the source, fork it from the day of the Oracle-Sleepycat deal and it will remain in the Open Source arena, forever. That's the legalese part, just imagine the marketing blunder and consequent crap from us they would have to endure. It would be like stealing from a blind orphan. Ellison would never do that, he is a smart man.

-Ramon F Herrera Received on Mon Mar 19 2007 - 09:55:45 CDT