I am concerned about the influence that Oracle could gain over the open source stack if they are able to acquire both JBoss and Zend, especially if Oracle continues to acquire additional open source companies. I also wonder if they can really assimilate additional acquisitions right now, particularly companies with corporate cultures so heavily influenced by open source culture. I posted a few more details and some additional analysis this morning on my blog.

Wait a second, time for a reality check. If some large company comes along and embraced the open-source movement somehow that's nefarious?

And why would anyone be concerned that a company that has it's DB and app's just about in every large company in the world, would want to pay attention to a segment of the industry that was begging for attention 10 years ago?

I guess I am not following the logic here.

First, of all just about every thing Oracle builds today is build on open-standards (except for the DB which is their special sauce...)- see java, php, web services. Just look at their middleware line.

Second, large companies acquiring smaller companies do not stifle innovation in the open-source movement. The movement is free from corporate control- that's the whole point, you can do whatever you want to devote your time to. Further, why would a vendor want to stifle and alienate a healthy and vibrant developer community? In many cases they are the same people that could be recommending commerical Orace products on other projects where an open-source DB or app server may not fit the project scope.

I think this is a good thing and will result in acceptance of qaulity open-source software in larger companies.