With its acquisition of Sun, Oracle is now the world's largest purveyor of open source software. However, as Ken Hess notes on the DaniWeb Forum Index, Oracle's support didn't start with its purchase of InnoDB, MySQL or Sun. The company has a history of supporting free and open source software and has done much for the FOSS community.

Hess lists 20 of Oracle's open source initiatives that he believes prove its dedication to the concept, the goal, and the future of open source software. The following are abbreviated descriptions offered by Hess:

1. MySQL

MySQL is the world's most popular open source database, powering hundreds of thousands of websites, web applications and data engines for the world's largest companies.

2. OpenOffice.org

As Microsoft Office's closest competitor, OpenOffice.org is the project challenging Microsoft's corner on the office suite market.

3. InnoDB

The transaction-safe engine for MySQL, InnoDB was purchased by Oracle a few years ago, and still lives on despite many speculating Oracle might kill it.

4. Berkeley DB

The non-relational database Berkeley DB solves important problems for developers due to its extreme performance, low overhead and no administration.

5. VirtualBox

Now offering teleport capability, VirtualBox, as Hess sees it, just might put it into competition with server virtualization technologies.

6. OpenSolaris

OpenSolaris offers ZFS, Zones, and Administration, and unlike Solaris, does not require SPARC architecture hardware on which to run.

7. Java

Java is one of the top three most deployed technologies in the world.

8. Glassfish

Self-described as a lightweight, flexible, and open source application server, Glassfish is the first compatible implementation of the Java EE 6 platform specification.

9. NetBeans

The free, open-source Integrated Development Environment (IDE) allows users to create professional desktop, enterprise, web, and mobile applications with Java, C/C++, PHP, JavaScript, Groovy, and Ruby. NetBeans Platform is the world's only modular Swing application framework.

10. Linux

"Did you know that Oracle is a major contributor to the Linux community?" writes Hess, who notes that apart from its own Unbreakable Linux product (OEL), Oracle has made significant contributions to key areas of Linux.

11. Xen

Oracle is a major contributor to feature development of Xen mainline software, a member of the Xen Advisory Board, and hosted Xen Summit 2009 at Oracle. The Xen hypervisor is part of the Oracle VM.

12. Eclipse

Oracle is a strategic developer and board member of the Eclipse Foundation, contributing developers and leadership to three Eclipse projects: Dali JPA Tools, JavaServer Faces (JSF), and BPEL; Oracle has also donated Oracle TopLink to the open source community.

13. PHP

Oracle is committed to enabling open source scripting language PHP for the enterprise with Zend Server. A free copy of Underground PHP and Oracle Manual is available where readers can learn how to use the PHP scripting language with the Oracle Database, from installation through optimization and management.

14. Apache MyFaces Trinidad

Oracle donates code to the Apache Foundation: "ADF Faces is a rich set of user interface components based on the JavaServer Faces JSR (JSR-127). The Oracle ADF Faces Rich Client Components provide various user-interface components with built-in functionality - such as data tables, hierarchical tables, and color and date pickers - that can be customized and re-used in your application."

15. Oracle+Saxon-B XSLT Processor

This is a project designed to allow Java developers to parse and transform XML documents.

16. Oracle Express Edition 10g

This Oracle server is free to use, develop, deploy, and use for any purpose. Hess describes it as "a great Oracle training tool".

17. XQilla XQuery Engine

This is an embedded XQuery engine for use with XML-based applications.

18. JDeveloper

Described as "a free integrated development environment (IDE) for building Web service-oriented applications using industry standards for Java, XML, SQL, and Web Services. It supports the complete development life cycle with integrated features for modeling, coding, debugging, testing, profiling, tuning, and deploying applications."

19. Oracle Validated Configurations

These are "pre-tested, validated Linux-based architectures with software, hardware, storage, and networking components with included documented best practices for deployment."

20. Oracle VM

A free server virtualization platform that supports both Oracle and non-Oracle products. Many of Oracle's products are supported and certified for the Oracle VM platform. [...read more...]

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