Oracle and Sun's Open Source Projects

When I wrote my Analysis of Oracle's Strategy for Sun's Middleware, I made mention of Oracle's somewhat vague statements about the future of several open-source communities and projects.  GlassFish is a special case and I covered it as such, but a couple key projects that did not have clear plans articulated were OpenESB and OpenSSO.

For OpenESB at least, and perhaps this is an indication of what will happen with OpenSSO, we do have more clarity from an e-mail sent on the users alias a couple days ago.  Thanks to Frank for sending it, and he highlights a few key things about OpenESB and GlassFish ESB:

• Oracle does not intend to let the project disappear and will keep it on java.net/Kenai.
• Oracle has scaled down the investments in OpenESB from what they were at Sun.
• There is a hope the community will step up to fill the void left by the reduced investment.
• Existing GlassFish ESB customers will be supported and can buy more licenses, but there is no intent to sell licenses to new customers.

There is also an updated governance document that continues to require a Sun Contributor Agreement (SCA) to be signed to contribute and outlines Oracle's special role in the project as steward and reserves the right to:

• Accept/reject committers
• Veto the roadmap
• Veto changes to the OpenESB website
• Accept / reject changes to this governance document

So in effect, they will continue to provide the infrastructure for the project but also maintain strict control of the project.  The question then is how these rights will be exercised.  My guess is that as long as what is proposed/contributed is an evolution of what exists they will remain fairly hands off.  However, should anything that is there become competitive to or a threat to an Oracle product, I'd expect the rights above to be exercised to some degree to address that.

It is also very important to note that by continuing to require the SCA to contribute, Oracle maintains copyright to all the code and thus the right to use anything developed and contributed in Oracle commercial product under a non-open-source license.  I don't think folks should be scared away by this alone, but it is something to remember and not be surprised by should features or code from OpenESB show up in Fusion Middleware.

This is good news for several of the companies that have formed around the development of components and implementation using OpenESB like Logicoy, ForgeRock, Pymma, Imola, Adjoovo, and more, as it means they don't have to create their own fork(s) and can continue to collaborate together in the community.

It is now up to the community to step up and contribute and see how this plays out for real, but the opportunity for them to do so is great news.  Will this same model be applied to OpenSSO?  We'll have to wait and see.