Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?

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  1. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss? (45 messages)

    Recently, many news sites and bloggers have suggested that Oracle may acquire JBoss. However, neither JBoss nor Oracle has issued a comment either confirming or denying the reports, with JBoss specifically saying that they had an official policy of not commenting on "speculation and rumour." Oracle could not be reached for comment. Most comments have been second- or third-hand, by parties who would be external to such an acquisition.
     
    This doesn't mean that such an acquisition is not in motion, but that any reports of such an acquisition aren't valid yet. Industry insiders, as well as BEA (in an article on CNET entitled "BEA found JBoss acquisition too expensive," quoting Chief Marketing Officer Marge Breya) indicated that a purchase of JBoss has been discussed, although the insiders could not (or would not) indicate how valid such discussions were. However, such insiders said that the primary difficulties were with the price point, indicating that there's at least something behind the rumours.
     
    If someone - Oracle, specifically - is trying to acquire JBoss, it's likely with the aim to acquire the successful JBoss support business, since JBoss itself is an open source product, much as IBM acquired Geromino expertise with the purchase of GlueCode in 2005. Other rumoured targets for Oracle included Zend Software and SleepyCat Software, makers of the Berkeley database engine.
     
    Some sources have said that Oracle will be making an announcement within two days. While it's hard to tell at this point whether a sale is actually being considered or is in progress, given that none of the companies have official statements on the matter, these sources have indicated that there is a "done deal" while not specifying any terms or specific targets.

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    Threaded Messages (45)

  2. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    Wouldn't it be fun to pull up Mark's earlier comments about Oracle Employees if Oracle really do buy JBoss?
    Reply to this Reply to original

  3. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    More interesting is this:

    >"JBoss has been shopping itself around for months," Breya
    >said, during which BEA and JBoss
    >representatives discussed purchase prices and other details
    >several times.

    "Around for months" was Geronimo. And it looks like Geronimo closes JBoss "model". They (JBoss) need to sell now.

    Marina
    Coldbeans
    Reply to this Reply to original

  4. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    More interesting is this: "JBoss has been shopping itself around for months," [..] They (JBoss) need to sell now.

    I don't think so. Jboss seems to have a workable business model, they have had good growth, and assuming they maintain the hype they could probably eventually make a go at an IPO. Not bad at all for a small training / consulting company with no IP and a realistic valuation (using services-based comparables) of $15-35mm.

    People assume that the equity markets are rational, but they are anything but. VCs count on that. If there's anything driving the price up, it's the threat of an IPO. In other words, Oracle would have to provide a reason for the VCs not to take the company public. I personally hope the VCs can get Oracle to pay a billion or two for Jboss. ;-)

    Peace,

    Cameron Purdy
    Tangosol Coherence: Clustered Shared Memory for Java
    Reply to this Reply to original

  5. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    Jboss seems to have a workable business model
    I still wonder how they can make money.
    The support? Companies may need support on JBoss when they deploy the first time, but it seems very limited.
    I tried to find some JBoss financial results on the web but did not find any.
    The only interest for Oracle to buy JBoss could be this point : know how to make money with open source software.
    If JBoss is not profitable, no one will buy it.
    In any case, it seems to be only a rumor (maybe launched by JBoss?).
    Reply to this Reply to original

  6. Oracle only buys things to throw them in the deep freeze[ Go to top ]

    Case in point: PeopleSoft.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  7. Oracle only buys things to throw them in the deep freeze[ Go to top ]

    Oracle just aquired the company I work for to form a new global retail division. So, to cancel out competition is not always their goal.

    Oracle has only recently begun taking open source companies and methodologies seriously. If the JBoss aquisition is true, I wonder if that means Oracle is becoming even more interested in open source or if they intend to close the JBoss source code.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  8. They need an App server[ Go to top ]

    Thier OC4J Appserver is a piece of junk and it is only licensed from Orion. If it were that great they would've bought it. We have all kinds of trouble with it. If they buy JBoss they are buying an app server pure and simple....
    Reply to this Reply to original

  9. The secret negotiation[ Go to top ]

    I personally hope the VCs can get Oracle to pay a billion or two for Jboss. ;-)
    Unsubstantiated rumo(u)r says MarcF himself is negotiating with LarryE. Oracle had to rent a baseball stadium for the negotiations as they couldn't shoehorn both of their egos in any smaller meeting room. I'd pay a lot to see that process, it must be along the lines of:
    - LarryE: Look, kid, your company is worth nothin', and in that case I can't give more than $200 million!
    - MarcF: SMD! You're kidding, right ? I mean, we had 16 million downloads! Even if you subtract the 3 million times I downloaded it myself, that's still a lot of idi^H^H^Hbeloved customers! We might just IPO and be worth billions tomorrow, don't you understand ?
    - LarryE: Bullshit. And remember, I'm only buying you to kill the f*ing product, it's not like I'm actually interested in it or anything! I hate this Java crap anyway.
    - MarcF: Well, OK then, $200 million and a tour on the boat. That's my last offer. Deal ?
    - LarryE: Deal! Slaves, roll over the cash for my friend... say your name again ? What does SMD mean by the way ?
    Reply to this Reply to original

  10. The secret negotiation[ Go to top ]

    @Alain

    LOL - freakin' hilarious!
    Reply to this Reply to original

  11. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    It could be fun to post again the Gavin King comments about the Oracle jdbc drivers!
    Reply to this Reply to original

  12. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    From Oracle point of view, it will be a good move since Oracle is not strong in Application server area as other competitive players in the market. It’s possible that Oracle might lose out sale of Oracle Application server to JBoss already existing customers but it might help him in increasing its sale of Database and applications. JBoss will also act as quality middleware platform which Oracle is lagging to bring all its applications to common platform.

    Shishank
    http://www.pcmspace.com
    Reply to this Reply to original

  13. Gavin King- pro Oracle of late[ Go to top ]

    Ok, for me this explains the mystery behind Gavin's pro Oracle attitude in some posts ago from him.
    Question: How could this impact TopLink because, of course, JBoss is coming with their own hibernate persistence product?

    J
    Reply to this Reply to original

  14. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    I think it could be a good thing for the community. Oracle has been a good and active participant in the specs these last few years (EJB, JSF, and others), and have proven that they are still very committed to developers.

    However, I doubt that the support business is the main reason for considering JBoss, should the rumour be true. I think bringing the mass of JBoss developers into the Oracle 'sphere' of influence could mean more medium to long term adoption of Oracle DB, Toplink, JDeveloper, Oracle's integration & portal products, and more.

    Plus having both Hibernate and Toplink under one roof along with Oracle DB would restores Oracle's monopoly in the persistence area. :)

    However, as I said, this could be a good thing. Based on the people I know setting Oracle's java engineering and marketing strategy, I'd trust them to be good to the JBoss community and stay true to the values of open source, perhaps even truer than JBoss could by itself as a company indebted to it's venture investors.

    Floyd
    Reply to this Reply to original

  15. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    I think it could be a good thing for the community. Oracle has been a good and active participant in the specs these last few years (EJB, JSF, and others), and have proven that they are still very committed to developers.

    Consolidation is not necessarily a good thing when it comes to OS, IMO. Oracle bought Orion awhile back and I'm not sure it was a good thing. I'll leave that up to another debate.

    The major software vendors are feeling the pinch from OS -- especially on an enterprise scale. Like JBoss or not, they come up in the discussion when J2EE vendors are listed for enterprise accounts ([sic] $$$$$ streams for software vendors). Why expend resources for R&D/capex to compete when you can buy a competitive brand at a fraction of the cost. To recoup their investment, I don't see any buying entity expanding innovation in the product -- that takes even more money and time to be integrated in the product stack. They usually just grab onto whatever udders exist and squeeze hard until they're dry.

    I hope this rumour isn't true from an innovation standpoint. Although I'm sure the JBoss VC group would be a little moist if it were true.

    The one positive thing about this rumour is that it exists at all. It's a good sign IT spending might accelerate in the near term instead of the miasma we've been in -- at least in the US.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  16. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    Plus having both Hibernate and Toplink under one roof along with Oracle DB would restores Oracle's monopoly in the persistence area. :)

    There are many other vendors providing implementations of Java persistence standards. BEA now has Kodo, for example.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  17. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    Plus having both Hibernate and Toplink under one roof along with Oracle DB would restores Oracle's monopoly in the persistence area. :)
    There are many other vendors providing implementations of Java persistence standards. BEA now has Kodo, for example.

    Ah yes, well said. Kodo is an excellent product.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  18. And Kodo is now open source too...[ Go to top ]

    Plus having both Hibernate and Toplink under one roof along with Oracle DB would restores Oracle's monopoly in the persistence area. :)
    There are many other vendors providing implementations of Java persistence standards. BEA now has Kodo, for example.
    Ah yes, well said. Kodo is an excellent product.
    And Kodo is now open source too...
    Reply to this Reply to original

  19. And Kodo is now open source too...[ Go to top ]

    Plus having both Hibernate and Toplink under one roof along with Oracle DB would restores Oracle's monopoly in the persistence area. :)
    There are many other vendors providing implementations of Java persistence standards. BEA now has Kodo, for example.
    Ah yes, well said. Kodo is an excellent product.
    And Kodo is now open source too...

    Well, at least some of it.....
    Reply to this Reply to original

  20. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    I suspect that Oracle are not buying the Jboss software stack. They are buying the Jboss Development Team skill set so they can develop a closed source version of Jboss with seamless Oracle integration that can compete head on with high end "Enterprise" middleware solutions from Weblogic, WebSphere and Tibco. The end game is that corporates with a substantial investment in Jboss skills will buy the commercial version rather than bare the cost of switching over to another open source Java middle ware solution and re-training staff.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  21. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    I suspect that Oracle are not buying the Jboss software stack. They are buying the Jboss Development Team skill set so they can develop...

    how do you buy the skill set of an open source project team?

    There's surely more value in the project, than the value directly added by JBoss employees
    Reply to this Reply to original

  22. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    I totally disagree. Most of the enterprise features(JEMS) added to the Jboss stack in recent times have been contributed by developers working for Jboss Inc. Take them out of the mix and JEMS development dries up. Not many volunteer developers can afford three or four servers to test clustering, load balancing and remote messaging. This also applies to the biggest open source project of all; Linux. The likes of Redhat and Suse make their money from proprietary system management tools which become essential when the server farm grows beyond three or four servers. That kind of development is complex and expensive and either exceeds the capabilities of volunteer developers or takes ages to develop. Tomcat had third party clustering in 4.1 and built in clustering in 5.0; that's about three years behind Bea Weblogic. Ditto for Apache. Jboss developers were slow to release data cache replication tools which opened business opportunities for commercial solutions such as TopLink and Tangosol Coherence. If the core Jboss developers working for Jboss Inc stop contributing to the open source version then it may be very difficult to replace them and Jboss may lack the features of some of the commercial offerings.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  23. JBOSS For Sale : Open Source Culture At Risk[ Go to top ]

    With corporations embarking on such purchases will the OS culture change??

    I am curious as to what Open Source will be come in the next 12 to 18 months. Popularity can be a good thing, but will this change the Culture?

     http://sos.blog-city.com/jboss_for_sale_corporations_buying_os_projects_whats_the_imp.htm
    Reply to this Reply to original

  24. Buying customers[ Go to top ]

    It makes sense. If it works for IBM, why not for Oracle? I guess the idea is to have JBoss be a low-end application server, and to charge for a high-end server with an easy migration path to it. Or maybe they'll just use JBoss and make money on services, but imho people the service-only strategy is tough. IBM has been doing this since before we were all born.

    They'll also save money on marketing. They can call up all their jboss customers and ask them if they are running Oracle.

    One thing that Oracle could bring to the table is app server clustering with infiniband. I recently figured out that UDAPL is a great candidate for a Java API, and Oracle uses infiniband successfully with Oracle RAC.

    Guglielmo

    Enjoy the Fastest Known Reliable Multicast Protocol with Total Ordering

    .. or the World's First Pure-Java Terminal Driver
    Reply to this Reply to original

  25. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    I think this is a clever marketing plan by JBoss.

    While the popularity of the JBoss AS is growing by leaps and bounds, there are still IT departments out there that might be concerned with using OSS in general and with not having a huge corporate machine(eg. BEA, IBM, Oracle) behind it in particular.

    But if BEA and now Oracle are interested in obtaining the company, it must be worth considering.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  26. Who would work for who[ Go to top ]

    If this were the case would Mike be working for Gavin or Gavin be working for Mike?

    Would they change the name to 10jBoss or JBossAS?

    I would pay a million dollars to see Larry and Mark having a civil conversation over dinner. Larry wearing a 10,000 suit and Mark in a joker outfit.

    Would they change the name of JDeveloper to JBossDeveloper?

    Would hibernate and toplink merge to form topnate or hiberlink?
    Reply to this Reply to original

  27. Plausible[ Go to top ]

    I think the rumours are plausible:

    1. Given the fact that JBoss is (partly) VC funded I wouldn't be surprised if the VCs wanted to make profit by selling JBoss.

    2. Oracle's appserver still only has a small market share, while JBoss AS is in widespread use resulting in quite a few services accounts which would open the possibility of cross selling into JBoss accounts and to small and medium businesses.

    3. It could be a preventive action: Cheap solutions can mature and in the end even threaten a major players profit (like Linux eating the UNIX marketshares) I think Paul Graham once said: "Don't ever let someone fly below you." This way the success would stay "in the family".

    Of course these are all speculations.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  28. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    While JBoss the company may be acquired, will the community go with it?

    http://dev2dev.bea.com/blog/estahl/archive/2006/02/oraclejboss_can_1.html

    Eric
    BEA Systems
    Reply to this Reply to original

  29. up to date information[ Go to top ]

    Written on the 13th February 2006:

    "In reality JBoss is a very basic application server. As you can see here, JBoss does not scale very well. "

    Here refers to a university study from March 2004 based on JBoss 3.2.3, released at the end of 2003...

    anyone fancies discussing the performance of the Pentium II?
    Reply to this Reply to original

  30. up to date information[ Go to top ]

    Point me to a SPECjAppServer2004 result that uses JBoss and I will gladly update my information!

    I hate to tell you but that pointer is to the most up to date benchmark out there. Wonder why?

    Eric
    Reply to this Reply to original

  31. up to date information[ Go to top ]

    Point me to a SPECjAppServer2004 result that uses JBoss and I will gladly update my information! I hate to tell you but that pointer is to the most up to date benchmark out there. Wonder why?Eric

    I don't know first-hand about jboss' performance, but my guess is that it's not as fast as websphere or weblogic. It's a matter of focus. They seem to emphasize new features rather than performance, or even stability or data integrity. JBoss has been around forever and they finally had to buy arjuna in order to have a recovery log. Compare that with Geronimo, which of course had a recovery log right out of the gate.

    However I believe that one of Hibernate's original guiding principles was indeed high performance.

    Guglielmo

    Enjoy the Fastest Known Reliable Multicast Protocol with Total Ordering

    .. or the World's First Pure-Java Terminal Driver
    Reply to this Reply to original

  32. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    I just don't get something.
    Jboss is as good as WL (+/- some subjective debating) but JBoss is free not counting support cost which might substantial and open source.
    So, if Oracle or anyother company buys JBoss, then it is not going to be free (not talking about donating money for open source project), additionally it is not going to be as innovative as an open source project then what whould the reason to choose JBoss over WL which we already have in our organization, in organization across the street and two blocks up and down?

    More then that if anybody buys JBoss then entire community will move to Geronimo, just to have their website running on open source. And don't forget about huge cost and dissatisfaction of the existing Oracle customers when they need to migrate to new APP server.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  33. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    Do you remember Orion? And how Oracle changed it to iAS? I dont want event think about montster they can make from JBoss :-/
    Reply to this Reply to original

  34. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    Do you remember Orion? And how Oracle changed it to iAS? I dont want event think about montster they can make from JBoss :-/

    I like to use Orion based iAS much more than JBoss based iAS.
    Oracles midas touch will broke everything.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  35. SleepyCat acquisition confirmed[ Go to top ]

    Apparently one of the rumours did have some substance. SleepyCat was indeed acquired by Oracle:
    http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060214/sftu130a.html?.v=1
    Reply to this Reply to original

  36. SleepyCat acquisition confirmed[ Go to top ]

    Apparently one of the rumours did have some substance. SleepyCat was indeed acquired by Oracle:http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060214/sftu130a.html?.v=1

    ...as was InnoBase which is a transactional storage engine for MySQL.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  37. SleepyCat acquisition confirmed[ Go to top ]

    Apparently one of the rumours did have some substance. SleepyCat was indeed acquired by Oracle:http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060214/sftu130a.html?.v=1

    Rumours do have to start somewhere. Oracle's interest is obviously to keep this quiet. On the other hand Marc's interest is for other potential buyers to be aware of this so he can himself a better price. So JBoss probably leaked this and it's probably true.

    Another possible source of rumours is whistleblowers, but since JBoss is not really open-source in spirit I can't imagine that anyone would want to blow the whistle on this for ideological reasons ...

    Guglielmo

    Enjoy the Fastest Known Reliable Multicast Protocol with Total Ordering

    .. or the World's First Pure-Java Terminal Driver
    Reply to this Reply to original

  38. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    Looks like the target was Sleepycat - maker of BerkeleyDB.

    http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/2006_feb/sleepycat.html
    Reply to this Reply to original

  39. They really did: " Oracle buys Sleepycat"[ Go to top ]

    http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8FP0SQO2.htm?campaign_id=apn_tech_down&chan=tc

    Oh man, does it mean Berkerley Dabatase Engine 4 Java will stop being open source, free or what ?
    Reply to this Reply to original

  40. If Oracle to buy JBoss, what about JBoss Seam?[ Go to top ]

    I think there are many developer what to know : If Oracle to buy JBoss, what about JBoss Seam? Cancel or .... Now I want to use seam in my project, but I afraid this.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  41. whose Culture?[ Go to top ]

    somebody above said that the they dontknow where the opensource culture is heading.is it cuming to an end,or is it the properiotary vendors want to move to or move a part of theirs to opensource.
    This is a debatable issue.At one point sun microsytems,bea,ibm are opensourcing their products..but at the other end they r acquiring the vulnerable opensource fishes.

    --lokesh
    http://lokeshpant.blogspot.com
    Reply to this Reply to original

  42. Oracle might as well buy everyone[ Go to top ]

    might as well buy BEA while they're at it. This is crazy.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  43. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    Usually the JBoss Inc guys are all over TSS threads that even remotely mention anything related to their products (or in most cases, the competition ;)

    Its very conspicuous this - their absence so far on this thread.

    Ah well,

    -krish
    Reply to this Reply to original

  44. Rumour: Oracle to buy JBoss?[ Go to top ]

    Atleast one part of the post that i made (which didnt appeared on the main page) has proved right here.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  45. Oracle tried to acquire MySQL (but failed)[ Go to top ]

    Just to fuel the rumours that Oracle might be on a big opensource shopping tour: Today it was confirmed by MySQL CEO Marten Mickos at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco that Oracle tried to acquire them (but failed).
    Reply to this Reply to original

  46. Oracle tried to acquire MySQL (but failed)[ Go to top ]

    more on the topic: Oracle's open source rollup
    Reply to this Reply to original