Oracle and Mozilla Foundation Work Quietly Together

KenDaMan writes "CNet is running a story about the ties between Oracle and the Mozilla Foundation. Oracle hired three people to work on Mozilla Lightning. This project, which aims to integrate Mozilla's calendar application, Sunbird, with its e-mail application, Thunderbird, is believed to be key to cracking the market dominance of Microsoft Outlook. Is Oracle getting set make an Open Source offering?"

Ok maybe open source

[Stonent1]

But they are probably wanting you to use an oracle back end.

benefit

[Renraku]

At least they're doing something that could benefit the public that doesn't include 'an exciting new offer and great deal!'

Re:Well..

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Oracle is by no means doing this philanthropically. They're doing it because Ellison despises Gates and Ballmer, and he's seen what Firefox has done.

He's a bragart, and if Lightning delivers what Firefox has, you can be sure he'll be publicly thumbing his nose at Gates.

The real challenge

[orangeguru]

Outlook is not the real key to beat Microsoft on the Office front - but Exchange.

As soon as you can free companies from the Exchange lock in and offer a better alternative then you have a chance.

Most people for example love OpenOffice, but won't switch, since they also need Outlook which is connected to the data on the Exchange server.

No Exchange server - no underlaying windows server. No Outlook - no Microsoft Office.

So what's needed is a strong Thunderbird for Office slaves and an Exchange replacement - plus total data import.

Re:Ok maybe open source

[Anonymous Coward]

If the source is open and under a suitably free license, it will get ported to postgresql and others pretty quickly.

Oracle sells Email Servers too

[bheer]

Oracle has been trying since forever for enterprises to take up its Enterprise email offering (which works with Outlook AFAIK. I'm pretty sure they'd love to give a free rich client to their customers, which could explain their love for Mozilla Calendar. And yeah, if open standards-based Calendaring catches on, one of the biggest reasons to use proprietary software (Notes/Exchange) goes away.

If Open-Sourcers had a strategy department, they'd make Mozilla Calendar the most important product they have to ship, far more important than Firefox. Unfortunately (or fortunately for IBM/MS) things don't quite work that way.

Re:Dear god no...

[larien]

I always thought this until I started working at a big company and realised just how quick & easy it was to have calendar & mail in one place with todo lists & other stuff.

Oracle Open Source? - No

[NitsujTPU]

Is Oracle getting set make an Open Source offering?

No.

Oracle offers a product that aims to compete head to head with Microsoft's suite of collaboration products.

One of my former clients was looking to use this software in their enterprise, which, at the time, was using mostly Microsoft products on this front. My impression of the matter was the that the only reason that they were even considering this was because they had a site license for Oracle's database, development, and web services products, and had on-site consultants offering solutions to them.

IE, Oracle certainly had their ear already.

Oracle probably views Thunderbird as a way to break Microsoft's hold on this sector of the market. By restoring some competition on this front, they could market their products more effectively.

Re:Dear god no...

[dzarn]

Why must a calendar be integrated with e-mail anyways?

Because it's great to get an invitation via email, which you can add to your calendar with one click, rather than re-entering the info?

Because I leave my email program running all the time, and I'd rather not have to leave another calendar program running as well?

Because both email and calendars have a pretty integral relation to a to-do list, and it's nice not to have to keep track of 2 lists, or do the whole copy-paste thing from one to the other. I just click on an email, mark it for follow-up by X date, and it's in my to-do list. Same with stuff I need to get done before an appointment.

Another secret?

[zappepcs]

Here's a thought.....
Its not secret anymore. With the release of Solaris 10 as free, is it any wonder that Oracle would look at opening its market share a bit with a similar move.

I think the real news here is that F/OSS is having an effect on the software industry. I believe that effect is a good one. Solaris 10 might not be the best thing I've ever seen, its a start. Oracle working in their domain space to open up things like CRM, SAP, and other areas is a damn good thing. If they can produce something that opens these and other markets to F/OSS then the competition gets tougher and more wide spread.

The opening of Microsoft dominated markets is nothing but good news. Any weakening of their grip on the software industry in any domain opens up that market so even proprietary vendors have a shot at it.

This move doesn't surprise me at all, in fact, I believe that we will see much more of this. It costs very little in terms of lock-in and other long term financial factors to work with F/OSS to open up a market that is practically locked down by a single vendor, whether that vendor is Microsoft or not.

A long time ago, it was said that you could never get fired for buying big blue. That kind of reputation is one that Microsoft never achieved. The software industry began changing so fast that it never could get that reputation, but the fallout of the fast paced changes is that if you have a reputation of great support and super value for money you will end up with market share. This is still in the process of becomming a defacto standard.

As F/OSS products become more technically and financially strong, it is in the best interests of any software vendor to work with those products, even promote and support them.

A product or two that runs on an Oracle backend product and directly competes with Microsoft etc. is a good thing... it opens up the market to more competition. If it will run on Oracle, it can probably run on mySQL etc. What options it ends up with is of little concern if it takes market share from the dominant player in that market.

Since people with little budgets are not Oracles main revenue stream, these new products would directly mangle revenue streams of Microsoft and make Oracle the version that you would use if you had to scale to large size operations.

It just makes sense.

Re:Dear god no..., you mean yes

[spectrokid]

My boss sends me an invite to an annoying meeting. I click "accept" (unfortunately). It gets copied to my agenda and synchronised to my phone. 15 minutes before the meeting, my phone starts beeping and sais "QM meeting, room AX5". All with ONE mouseclick. Do this in open source and I will WALK all the way to Redmond to tell Billy he should stick a fork in it.

Re:Dear god no...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that facilitates the creation of meetings is inherently evil.

When you eventually get a job

[Run4yourlives]

You'll find out.

Using open source against your competitors

[notany]

Using open source against your competitors:

1. If competitor has product that is clear market leader, make your product open source. That hurts competitors. Just giving up helps them.
2. If competitor has another product that is not directly competing with your product, cut their money flow by developing free alternative.

I think Oracle using number 2 against microsoft.

Re:Dear god no...

[kubalaa]

Your wishes are relics of an MSDOS era when only one application could run at one time, so your data was inextricably tied to the application you used it in. Here's a brilliant idea: store your calendar, emails, etc. in FILES, and provide a uniform API to search, retrieve, and update this information. Then your email program can add stuff to your calendar and visa versa without them having to share a window on your desktop. Why, it's almost like a DATABASE.