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Update 7/2015 Oracle isn’t screwing just F/LOSS projects, if appears. Is Oracle really forcing enterprise customers to use their cloud?

Seems that MSFT might be doing the same for Office 365 to get higher client counts. At least 1 major company who never intends to use Office 365 got a better license deal just by signing up. They never intend to use the service and are migrating to Postgres and LibreOffice as quickly as possible.

Original Text:
Oracle is effectively killing some of the most important, fantastic, open source and FLOSS tools that we’ve come to depend upon. This is really sad for the FOSS world. It will not be long before these currently open tools disappear because Oracle can’t directly make any money from supporting them. Let me explain.

Oracle is the New Evil Empire

Oracle has never been very friendly to FOSS or FLOSS, but since buying Sun Microsystems, they have effectively killed some of the most important projects.

The Almost Dead List – Some Already DEAD

• OpenSolaris
• ZFS
• MySQL
• InnoDB
• Java
• OpenJDK
• NetBeans
• VirtualBox
• Oracle VM
• GlassFish
• OpenOffice

Here’s a list of FOSS from Oracle that will probably be only useful for historical purposes soon. Most of the leaders for these projects that Oracle got with the Sun purchase have left Oracle after trying to fit into the new corporate culture. Full disclosure: I’ve owned Oracle AND Sun Microsystems stock over the years. Since the Sun purchase, I sold ORCL and haven’t owned any shares on over a year.

If you are currently using any of those tools, you need to make strategic plans for alternates. Oracle *will be killing them off. Some will be saved by creating new FLOSS projected based on the last open license version.

Alternatives for Some

• ZFS – BTRFS
• MySQL – Postgres
• Java – Ruby or C++ (or any number of lesser known languages like D for F#)
• VirtualBox – KVM or VMware Player
• OpenOffice – LibreOffice

Or you can just plan to purchase the right to use the tools at Enterprise Software Costs. Not cheap.

I’m not actively using most of the software listed above except VirtualBox, OpenOffice and MySQL. For those, I have alternatives, but like almost everyone else, change isn’t easy until it is forced on us.

I’m not anti-corporations, but Oracle has not been a good steward and I have no reason to believe they will change. Just look at the handling of the OpenSolaris shutdown. I was a member of a local OpenSolaris UG. The leader was a well known and respected former Sun Systems Engineer, currently working for Oracle. I miss the UG. Oracle has proven they cannot be completely trusted. They are willing to change the rules.

Without the GPL, BSD and similar FOSS licenses, we’d be completely screwed. Now is a good time to donate to the EFF or FSF. A $20 donation will go a long way.