Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is a globe-spanning, company-consuming machine with an unquenchable appetite. Good software companies go in one end, and cash flows out the other. Poor, overpriced software is a byproduct of this process. Larry Ellison was Oracle's dictator until 2014. In 2010, Oracle officially replaced Micro$oft as the evil empire. Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems and decided to destroy its legacy from the inside out.
Dismantling Sun's fresh corpse
MySQL
Drama erupted in 2009, when Oracle and Sun entered into discussion about acquisition. Although the United States quickly approved the deal, Oracle had a tougher time having the deal approved in Europe. Meanwhile, Monty Widenius, one of MySQL's core founders, objected. He didn't want Oracle to have their dirty, little hands on his mind child. HelpMySQL was created as a result. Unfortunately, the petition didn't work, so Widenius decided to create a MySQL fork called MariaDB.
In late 2012, Wikimedia began to move from MySQL to MariaDB.
Discontinuing OpenSolaris
On August 13, 2010, an internal memo for Oracle's secret plans for OpenSolaris was leaked:
All of Oracle’s efforts on binary distributions of Solaris technology will be focused on Solaris 11. We will not release any other binary distributions, such as nightly or bi-weekly builds of Solaris binaries, or an OpenSolaris 2010.05 or later distribution. We will determine a simple, cost-effective means of getting enterprise users of prior OpenSolaris binary releases to migrate to S11 Express.
Oops. So that's why new test versions of OpenSolaris 2010 weren't released. We've been pondering about why since July. Oracle basically wants its hardcore fans to switch to the paid, closed version.
This led to the rise of Illumos Foundation and their OpenIndiana operating systems.
OpenOffice.org
On September 28, 2010, some disgruntled OpenOffice.org developers formed The Document Foundation and created a new OpenOffice.org fork called LibreOffice. TDF extended an open hand toward Oracle, but Oracle would have none of that and told them to resign from the company.
On June 1, 2011, Oracle announced its donation of OpenOffice to Apache.
Gallery
See also
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