Oracle Really Did Buy Sleepycat

The [http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2006/tc20060209_810527.htm roumers] are true, Oracle is buying sleepycat. You can check out the [http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/2006_feb/sleepycat.html press release from Oracle], or the [http://blog.sleepycat.com/2006/02/next-ten-years.html blog posting from the (former) President of Sleepycat] confirming it. Over the next few days you’ll see a lot of talk about Oracle just trying to diverisfy and Oracle just trying to kill off mysql, but the important thing to remember is that both of these things are probably true. [[image /xzilla/templates/default/img/emoticons/smile.png alt=”:-)” style=”display: inline; vertical-align: bottom;” class=”emoticon” /]] Buying sleepycat does actually give Oracle an entry into the embeded space which they don’t exactly have, and falls in line with some other things they have been doing. I won’t ignore the bonus of getting another shot in at mysql; All oracle really needs to do here is simply put the focus of sleepycat soley into the embeded space and it does shut off a possible innodb exit plan for mysql. I am sure they have thought of this. I’m sure it was a factor. But taking shots at mysql is not taking shots at open source, it’s taking shots at a commercial database vendor. If you’re using BerkelyDB in your open source projects I seriously doubt you have anything to fear. If your using BDB tables in mysql ([http://ebergen.net/wordpress/?p=102 and afaict no one really does]) then yes you might have something to fear. But on the whole Oracle isn’t anti-open-source (look at [http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/linux/htdocs/oracleonlinux_faq.html what they are doing with linux]), they are just anti RDBMS competition, and especially anti commercial RDBMS competition (and especially anti anti against [http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/press-release/release_2003_16.html RDBMS and SAP competition]).