Published at LXer:

What lies behind Oracle's open source vendor buying spree? That question was hotly debated at San Francisco's Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) after news broke about Oracle's successful and attempted purchases of two open source database vendors -- Sleepycat Software and MySQL AB, respectively -- during that two-day event. "Oracle stole the buzz at this show," said Douglas Levin, CEO of Waltham, Mass.-based Black Duck Software in an interview at OSBC. "People are trying to understand Oracle's motivations for buying open source software (OSS) companies like Sleepycat and InnoDB and, possibly in the near future, JBoss." Levin has been working behind the scenes with prospective open source vendor buyers and sellers, because Black Duck specializes in compliance management and due diligence for software asset sales. In this interview, he offers an insiders' view of the levels of meaning behind Oracle's OSS deals.

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