Sun Shines On Oracle Part Deux

May 13, 2009 – 22:03 by Ryan

In a previous post, we discussed the history of Oracle and MySQL. In this post we will focus on Oracle’s relationship with its new star, Java.

History

Oracle made its first big move into the Java space in 2001 when it acquired a non-exclusive license for the source code of Sweden-based IronFlare AB’s Orion Application Server to serve as the foundation for the Oracle Application Server. Oracle continued to make progress in the J2EE space for the next few years, but it was always stuck behind JBoss, WebLogic, WepShere and others.  Rumors circulated around BEA Systems for years that Oracle was interested in purchasing the company until 2008 when Oracle finally acquired the company. With the BEA acquisition, Oracle came into control of a superior Java Application Server (WebLogic) and one of the few really good Java virtual machines, JRockit. The acquisition of Sun and, subsequently, Java puts Oracle firmly in control of the Java industry.

Future

The majority of the Java virtual machine was open sourced under the GPL V2 license in 2007 via the OpenJDK project. Several libraries related to the Java 2D APIs were withheld because of previous license agreements Sun had made. If Oracle decides to stop supporting free and open source Java, there will be a void in the industry that would require Google, IBM, HP and others to invest heavily in the language to keep dominance away from Oracle.

We expect IBM to make a play for Red Hat before they lose too much of its competitive edge in the software infrastructure industry.

Relevance

According to the May 2009 TIOBE Programming Community Index, Java comprises the dominant 19.537% of the programming language mindset.  The ownership of the Java space gives Oracle a problematic amount of control and influence over the Java platform. As server operating systems become less relevant in favor of logic embedded in platform independent Java, Oracle is well positioned to place extreme pressure on all of Microsoft’s server solutions. Additionally, most of the modern scripting languages have been embedded into the Java virtual machine so the platform truly transcends Linux, Windows, Mac OSX, Solaris etc. Google’s new operating system, Android, is based on Linux but the APIs exposed to developers are primarily Java-based. Additionally, Google also recently released Java support for its platform solution, App Engine, and its Web Toolkit is also based on Java.

With an uneven power shift over the Java platform, it is completely possible that innovation of Java will not continue at its current pace.

Growth

We would like to see Google participate more in funding, development and maintenance of the OpenJDK project to help ensure innovation is pushed forward and Oracle is kept at a safe distance from discontinuing open source releases.