Developers and users of open source software are keeping an anxious eye on Oracle, writes KARLIN LILLINGTONin San Francisco

BY VIRTUE of its purchase of Sun Microsystems last January, Oracle has acquired not just a venerable computer hardware maker but some of the open source community’s best-known applications and building blocks, ranging from database MySQL to the Java platform to operating system Solaris.

Even the free and popular Microsoft Office challenger Open Office now belongs to Oracle.

Oracle isn’t a newcomer to open source – software that is community-produced by developers, often made available at zero or nominal cost, with the software code freely available to anyone to examine or modify. It has long supported many open-source applications and has been a champion of open-source operating system Linux for years.

The company is the sixth most significant contributor to Linux’s kernel, the core code that is constantly being refined by thousands of developers around the globe.

In the eyes of many, though, it is one thing for Oracle to have been a long-time friend to numerous open source projects; it is quite another for this behemoth proprietary company to fully own projects that in some cases are direct competitors to Oracle’s own commercial products.

“Oracle’s high-handed approach to open source is fast making it public enemy number one as far as free software is concerned (yes, even relegating Microsoft to second place),” Glyn Moody, author of several books on technology history, wrote recently in a blog post.

Take MySQL. Launched as an alternative to Oracle software, the Sun-owned database, it has become one of the most popular open source applications, used by individuals and small businesses and also by large organisations like WalMart, Craigslist, Facebook and Linkedin.

Or Solaris, Sun’s proprietary version of the Unix operating system which Sun had begun to open source a few years back.

Oracle’s relative silence on the future of these projects since January has not eased fears that it might let them languish or even kill them off.

An independent effort behind an open source version of Solaris has already conceded defeat.

A new organisation, called OpenSolaris, created to formalise development effort, dissolved earlier this year when Oracle failed to liaise directly with its governing board on the future of the open source version of the OS.

Open source developers mused over what might happen next on discussion forums and technology blogs.

“Unless there is a large enough support-paying user base of OpenSolaris, you can bet that Oracle will not be interested – Oracle is a business, not a charity,” wrote one in a comment on a Computerworld blog.

Oracle’s ownership of Java and its patents also became involved in controversy almost immediately.

To kick things off, James Gosling, the eminent Sun engineer who created Java – a computing platform that was designed to enable developers to write a program once then run it in any computing environment – quit Oracle soon after he became an employee by virtue of its purchase of Sun.

In an interview in InformationWeek published during OpenWorld, he aired various grievances about how he felt he was treated. However he dismissed concerns about Java’s future at Oracle.

“I’m actually not very concerned about Java at Oracle, because Java’s really acquired a life of its own,” Gosling said. “There’s only so much damage Oracle can do, because so much of their business depends on Java. It’s in their best interest to treat it well.”

Some developers feel otherwise. Oracle has already shown it will take a proprietary view of Java’s patents.

It has filed a lawsuit against Google, arguing that Google has misused Java by altering parts of it for use in Google’s Android mobile device operating system. Going to court over patents could alienate the wider Java developer community, argue some open source commentators.

Last week at OpenWorld, Oracle’s annual user conference in San Francisco, Oracle finally gave some indications of what it intended to do with its collection of open source projects. Solaris would continue to be developed, under the name Solaris11. An “express” version is to be released in coming months.

“Solaris is a very serious project to Oracle,” Oracle’s vice-president of systems John Fowler said during his keynote at OpenWorld. It seems though that an open version will only be supported and updated after improvements go into the proprietary version.

Oracle also said it would soon release an updated version of MySQL.

“With Oracle, we are going to invest more in MySQL than Sun could or MySQL as an independent company could, and fit it within a large enterprise infrastructure to help customers take advantage of it in a way that they could not before,” Oracle’s chief corporate architect Edward Screven told an OpenWorld audience.

Oracle also set out a roadmap for Java development, especially on its mobile platform, Java ME, which has languished and largely been ignored as a basis for the popular small “apps” that have driven user adoption of the Apple iPhone and iPad and of Android-based devices and handsets.

Oracle vice-president Tom Kurian stressed that Oracle would push to enhance Java ME and build an app developer community. “I would not underestimate our ability to build an excellent mobile platform,” he told journalists at OpenWorld.

Fowler added: “The Java community is very, very supportive of our product plans.”

There is evidence that this is indeed the case. A survey of developers during the summer by business intelligence analyst Jaspersoft indicated three-quarters think Oracle will stand by Java and MySQL.

Open Office, meanwhile, will still be available as a standalone productivity software suite and will also be offered to enterprise users as another of Oracle’s now vast array of integrated applications. However, this week a core group of open source developers said they would take Open Office under their wing for further development, independent from Oracle.

They are hoping that Oracle will allow them to continue to use the Open Office name.

Somewhat controversially, Oracle also said during OpenWorld that it would release an Oracle kernel for Red Hat Linux, arguing that Red Hat did not incorporate code enhancements fast enough.

The Oracle kernel would be optimised for Oracle software.

“We recommend you use it on all of our software,” Screven said.

None of these moves seems to have wholly satisfied the broad open source community or fully answered what Oracle might do with its open source properties.

Screven gave some indication, though, noting during his keynote: “Take a step back and think about the open source pieces Oracle has . . . we have a very broad stack of open source technologies that mirrors our strategy of providing open, integrated solutions.”

Perhaps the best insight has already been given by Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison.

In an interview in the Financial Timesin 2006, he said: "So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do.

“We don’t have to fight open source, we have to exploit open source.”