Open Source Weblog

"There's a lot of romantic notions about open source - that just from the air these developers contribute and don't charge," said Ellison. "There's this idea that because it's open source people who work in Radio Shack develop the software for free, it's just not true."

It's true that open source development does not come for free, and vendors and VC firms are footing the bill right now but the reality is that open source is not only the product of IBM, Intel, Oracle et al, either.

It may have been a throw away comment from Ellison but it belittles the contribution of smaller open source businesses and individual developers in building the momentum behind open source that the likes of Oracle are now reaping the rewards from.

It's ironic that Ellison saw fit to talk up the popularity of Sleepycat, while also talking down the community of Sleepycat users and developers that made the product what it is today, for example. Meanwhile few could doubt the importance of JBoss (an apparent Oracle acquisition target) in establishing open source as a middleware force.

"Red Hat didn't make Linux: IBM made Linux, Intel made Linux, Oracle made Linux," according to Ellison, who seems to think that Linux began with IBM's decision to invest in the technology. "Open source becomes successful when major industrial corporations invest heavily in that open source product," he added.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that major industrial corporations only invest in open source when they can see that it is about to be successful… and then try to take all the credit.

One element that Ellison is completely overlooking in his assessment of open source is the importance of the community. An open source community does not necessarily mean a community of developers.

This is something that Sun - of all companies - understands, and is something that separates companies that are playing around with open source from those that are engaging with it. I happened to be speaking with Sun's EVP of software, John Loiacono, this morning, and the contrast in attitude between Sun and Oracle was unmistakable.

Having had a confused - and confusing - attitude towards open source for years, Sun has recently embraced the concept with its OpenSolaris project and plans to open source the Java/Solaris Enterprise System.

The company's intentions are far from altruistic. It wants to gain traction with its enterprise software to gain subscription revenue and hardware sales, but it understands that the way to do this is through building a community of users to generate volume, rather than simply acquiring it.

"Most of the 11,000 [OpenSolaris community] people don't contribute code back, they're interested in being part of the community," Loiacono said. "The value comes when you get the community involved."

There is value, he explained, in engaging with the users - whether that be an individual developer who will never buy a Sun support contract but who will spread the word, a business developer who might up-sell to his/her IT manager and beyond, or an IT manager or CIO who will sign the subscription agreement.

Sun would rather get the latter, of course, but it is aware that in order to increase its chances of doing so, it also has to appeal to the former as well. "If you don't get the volume, you don't get the relevance," Loiacono said. "If you don't get the mass volume you never get the chance to know if you're being successful."

Of course, Sun and Oracle are coming from very different positions in the software industry, and it could be argued that Sun has nothing to lose. The flipside is that Sun has everything to gain, and Oracle - for all its current dominance - has everything to lose.

"Having said that, we're a great believer in open source, we're a great believer in Apache," added Ellison. "You saw us buy Sleepycat, you saw us buy InnoDB, so I think you'll see Oracle choosing to participate in open source in those places where we think open source can win."

Open source is not a badge to be worn to impress the right people, however. "Open source is not a communist movement," added Ellison, and he is right - but it does involve a way of thinking that is very different to Ellison's. Giving credit where credit is due and engaging a community are a big part of that.