Following its decision to end open distribution of source codes for its Solaris enterprise operating system, Oracle now faces backlash from the open source community which is likely to damage its relationship with developers in the long-run, industry watchers noted.
The software giant revealed in a leaked internal memo last week that it intended to end open source developers' daily access to builds of Solaris binaries--after version 2010.05--which it inherited from its Sun Microsystems acquisition, approved in January this year. Instead, the company is focusing its developer efforts on bringing to market its proprietary Solaris 11 platform and will only distribute an open source version of the OS after its official launch.
Commenting on Oracle's decision, senior Ovum analyst Laurent Lachal said emotions within the open source camp are "running very high" currently and the IT giant is likely to face backlash from people with strong open source convictions.
He noted in his e-mail that every large software company needs to have a "proactive open source strategy", and this includes nurturing the goodwill of various communities that make up the open source movement.
Lachal explained: "Based on Oracle's latest moves, regardless of its legal validity, it will be difficult for Oracle to get that goodwill, especially for the other open source projects it is in charge of such as MySQL and OpenOffice. There may come a time when Oracle will wish it had spent more efforts making friends in the open source community."
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