News Flash: Oracle Still Hates Open Source Software

It's no wonder that Google, Red Hat and others have been abandoning Oracle's most visible open-source project, MySQL. After all, Oracle has a highly conflicted relationship with open source. Nowhere is this conflict more apparent than in a new white paper Oracle released for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) in which Oracle suggests open source costs more and is less reliable.

Unfortunately for Oracle, the DOD has its own white paper on open source—several, actually—which directly contradicts Oracle's key arguments.

Oracle is an odd beast. Throughout the whitepaper, Oracle somewhat accurately proclaims itself "one of the biggest proponents and contributors to open source within the industry," and points to ways that it improves open source. Much of this is true: Oracle does significantly contribute to open source.

But given how much of Oracle's business depends upon a steady stream of big, upfront license deals with eternal maintenance fees, it's not surprising Oracle damns open source with faint praise...