Open Sourcers Optimistic About Oracle/Sun ... Mostly

Open source vendors are largely optimistic about the Sun/Oracle deal, though questions linger over some projects heavily supported by Sun.

By Sean Michael Kerner | Apr 21, 2009
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Sun is one of the world's largest open source vendors, making its acquisition by Oracle a development that will have repercussions throughout the open source world.

Despite the enormity of the news, however, many open source vendors that spoke with InternetNews.com said they are cautiously optimistic about the impact of Oracle's Sun acquisition -- and what it could mean for open source software, Java and Linux.

On the Java front, the Eclipse Foundation, which for years has had a Java development effort competitive with Sun's Netbeans, sees the Oracle buy as opportunity for the governance of the Java Community Process (JCP) to evolve. The JCP is the process by which Sun has led the governance of an open development process for Java since 1998.

"Oracle is a strong leader and contributor to both the Java and Eclipse communities," Mike Milinkovitch, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, told InternetNews.com. "The JCP needs to undergo a major reorganization to make it more open, transparent and, in particular, vendor-neutral. I hope that Oracle will take this opportunity to make the appropriate changes to allow the JCP to be an effective organization that leads the Java community."

Learn which projects might not fare so well at InternetNews.com.

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