Oracle looks to reassure free software movement

Oracle has promised to invest in open source following the Sun merger

Oracle has used today's announcements on the merger with Sun to reassure the open source movement that its motives are pure.

The company was keen to reassure those who campaigned against its merger on the basis of the company's commitment to open-source code, and said that it will up the service and support levels it offers.

"Over the past seven to eight months there has been a lot of uncertainly in the Sun user base," said Douglas Myhill, head of alliances at Morse.

"Regulation meant that Sun/Oracle could not provide detailed plans for the future, which has left customers with question marks over what the future product roadmap will look like. It was clear that certainty was needed back in the market, and we will now start to see this."

Oracle's chief corporate architect, Edward Screven, said today that MySQL will benefit from considerable investment, and that its sales team will be kept independent of Oracle's other operations.

OpenOffice.org will also remain a separate entity, and will keep its existing development team, he said. It will also be extended into a cloud service similar to Google Docs called Oracle Cloud Office.

On the Java front, Oracle will look to increase compatibility between the Java Runtime Environment on desktops and mobile devices to make life easier for developers. JavaScript integration will also be accelerated.

The JavaOne industry trade show will remain independent from Oracle, the company said, but will now be run concurrently with Oracle OpenWorld.

"The big thing that inspired a lot of confidence is the announcement that Oracle will be running the JavaOne conference. It goes far beyond using Java as an instrument," Wayne Citrin, chief technical officer at JNBridge, told V3.co.uk. "We can't see it keeping Java in stasis."