2/14/2006
Will Oracle Make a Play for Zend?
Oracle recently bought out Sleepycat Software, the creators of the Berkley DB. Berkley DB is the most widely used open source database engine. Last October, Oracle acquired InnoDB another major database engine.
The MySQL server application supports several different database engines. Two of these being Berkley DB and InnoDB. MySQL was also recently working with Sleepycat to create a new transactional database engine to replace InnoDB. MySQL’s latest release, MySQL 5.0, was built around the InnoDB transactional engine. MySQL may be starved for alternative database engines shortly. Building a new engine from scratch will be costly.
So who’s next on Oracle’s radar? Current reports list JBoss and Zend.
What will that mean for the PHP community? Traditional open source community thinking views the corporate software world as the enemy. At the top of that list of software dictators are Microsoft and Oracle. A fortune 100 corporation owning the product one of the largest open source communities will not sit well with a large percentage of the community. I have myself have been nonplussed at the corporatization of PHP to Zend. That is bound to happen when a community expands from not-for-profit to corporate entity. Everybody has to find a way to make a living though.
More news on the Oracle Sleepycat deal
More news on Oracle and Zend
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