Oracle Good – Microsoft Bad? You bet.
Two very interesting news articles appeared overnight.
Oracle continues to invest in the Open Source eco system by helping to improve development platforms that can use Oracle’s database engine. They have just released to the Open Source community (under a valid Open Source License) an improved OCI8 driver for PHP that should enable much better scaling and Enterprise level transaction capabilities to one of the world’s most popular development languages – PHP. The headline reads:
Oracle Contributes Breakthrough PHP Code To Open Source Community
New PHP Driver Brings Enterprise-Class Scalability, High Availability to Web 2.0 Applications
This is a GREAT move for everyone concerned. It means Enterprise users of PHP can use the database engine they trust. It also means that PHP gets an improved enterprise class database driver. It also means that Oracle’s driver – being Open Sourced – will almost certainly get better over time as more and more developers’ eyes fall on their code…
Now, let’s compare this with the reported comments of that calm, considered, articulate (sarcasm intended) and socially inept chap from Microsoft. But first, you have to see these short videos if you haven’t before. Just remember that this is the CEO of Microsoft, and these are not unique. There’s quite a few more like, and some even worse than, this on YouTube.
Would you buy anything from this man? Seriously?So what’s he been saying now? It’s all over the web again; basically he threatened Red Hat, and Red Hat’s users, along with most if not all of the FOSS community with Patent lawsuits. But once again he failed to say what patents were being breached and how. Groklaw has a comprehensive review of the proceedings thus far – including the apparent “scramble by M$ lawers” to – as yet unsuccessfully – come up with an “official” position and explanation of what he really meant. And we thought The Labour Party were good at spinning.
As the Open Source community has said time and time again, show us the code that infringes on your oh-so-precious patents and we’ll either fix it or prove prior art (invalidating the patent claim). But no. The idiot continues to mouth off without thinking and all he will achieve by doing this is alienating more and more of his own customers and the free world.
Maybe he should go and have a chat with Larry Ellison?
As a slight aside, and from what I understand about this sort of thing, here in the EU most of these claims are totally invalid anyway as we don’t allow the patenting of software ideas in the same way. Guess where he was when he made these comments? Yep; here in the UK – Jerk.
Tags: Microsoft, Open Source, Oracle
