Nickname: RC

Review: Seems like a risky move, but fact remains that most organizations are looking to open source as an alternative since it is proven over past few years. as equally secure and consistent with performance. This would be wise move to offer something which your customer would anyways want to evaluate before buying oracle. In long run, Oracle's fusion strategy would fit best into the open source revolution, this means definite opportunity and a long way to go. Best of luck to Larry.

Date reviewed: Feb 13, 2006 6:47 PM

Nickname: nitemare

Review: I see at least two approaches Oracle can take. First, there is the Red Hat model where the development version (Fedora) is free and the "stable," supported version is not free. Second, there is an opportunity for Oracle to give the little people something at the bottom end and hope they will step up to for-pay products. For many of us, Oracle's products were too expensive and we built rather sophisticated systems ourselves by putting together a collection of open source software. Were our systems better? I wouldn't be able to sell that idea to a Fortune 500 company. A small or medium-sized business that wants to grow needs to have expansion plans and if that means using Oracle software in the distant future, it may be an idea to get on the Oracle road as early as possible. But that's just my opinion. :-)

Date reviewed: Feb 11, 2006 5:29 PM

Nickname: gofi2k

Review: By expanding market share by just buying up companies, Oracle is in effect trying to imitate IBM's HelpDesk. The only difference is, IBM knows the solutions that can help. Oracle, on the other hand, is going to be as confused as its customers!

Date reviewed: Feb 11, 2006 2:56 PM

Nickname: PC

Review: No mention of Sun?

Date reviewed: Feb 11, 2006 2:39 PM

Nickname: Jeff

Review: You guys are wrong about Oracle App Server. It's almost a billion dollar business (and very profitable) for them right now. They are actually leading most Gartner and all Forrester analyst polls in this regard. JBoss secures this, puts them neck and neck with IBM in marketshare and really is aimed at killing BEA off. It's the same reason they've bought all these applications companies. Immediate market share and a great consolidation message putting great applications underneath great technology. No one else is offering this today, IMHO.

Date reviewed: Feb 11, 2006 1:31 AM

Nickname: barfo rama

Review: Oracle AS may suck, but it is hardly unsuccessful.

Date reviewed: Feb 11, 2006 12:49 AM

Nickname: OS Hysteria

Review: If true, this would be a very stupid business move. What exactly would Oracle be buying? Oracle would not own the copyrights in the code, the original authors/contributors do. JBoss claims to own a "brand," yet the logos are used willy-nilly on both its commercial Web site and the community's Web site. There are as many if not more non-JBoss employee contributors as there are Jboss employee contributors. Non-employees ratin their IP rights in their contributions and are free to license or contribute their contributions to other projets on whatever terms they wish. Oracle won't own all of the copyrights in the code, so it can't change the license model. Being stuck with the LGPL means there is no barrier to other companies competing for support subscription dollars for the same code. If Oracle is really silly enough to pay $400 million for nothing, SAP, IBM and its other competitors should rejoice. Maybe Larry would be interested in oceanfront property in Denver, Colorado too.

Date reviewed: Feb 10, 2006 11:03 PM

Nickname: Igor

Review: Andrew: Puh-lease. There is no software utopia. Are the Oracle-targeted companies non-profits? Of course they are committed to their products, but they want to make money like every other software company.

Date reviewed: Feb 10, 2006 9:13 PM

Nickname: Göran Persson

Review: This could prove to be a smart move by Oracle. It could put them in the lead among companies providing middleware solutions without paying too much. But then again Oracle failed with I don't even remember 4 or 5 generations of application servers, so what says that the will be able to manage JBoss?

Date reviewed: Feb 10, 2006 5:34 PM

Nickname: Shailendra Vaidya

Review: I remember Larry saying a long time back that his only ambition is to see Microsoft at No. 2 below Oracle! I am sure he will do much more than acquire companies to achieve his ambition. But the open source route that he has chosen will surely not enable him to come close to it. The most it will do is add a few hundred million dollars to Oracle's revenue -- peanuts if you look at his ambition. And again, the (corporate) world has yet to fully comprehend the methods to adopt to gain maximum profit out of the open source movement. Betting on this could be an advantage, but how far will it take Oracle to become No. 1 in the world is unclear.

Date reviewed: Feb 10, 2006 4:06 PM