So the whole world is buzzing that Oracle could buy JBoss. JBoss is not commenting, and oracle is mum too. We won't know until Oracle coughs up the cash and Fleury becomes an Oracle VP.

What I'm interested in is what will happen to JBoss, and to Oracle Application Server (OAS). A could years ago, Oracle had a particularly horrific app server (called OAS as well). They bought OrionServer's source, renamed it OC4J and released a much better Oracle internet Application Server (Oracle iAS) using OC4J as its J2EE core. With 10g they still use OC4J and have made tons of changes (and reverted to the "OAS" name). If you look at OC4J it's really nice and simple. Pure java, the install is an unzip/jar, and it runs everywhere you have a JRE. OAS, however, is sort of a big, bulky app server. It has lots of features and it much more complicated than just simple OC4J.

Currently JBoss is pretty cool and easy to use. My fear is that Oracle will replace OC4J in their app server with JBoss guts. So basically Oracle would sort of complicate up JBoss and make it harder to use.

Not to mention my fear that Oracle would cease development of the open source JBoss and only develop for their required support versions. But I think this would kill their reputation. And that would hurt in their push to compete with IBM and Sun as "open source" friendly companies.

But then acquiring JBoss could just be an effort to get any market share for their app server, which is getting butchered by WebSphere, WebLogic and JBoss.

I'm surprised that Microsoft isn't trying to buy JBoss so they can directly compete with the app server market with an app server that runs J2EE and .Net.

Oh yeah, happy valentine's day all you nerds and nerd-wives. It's a scam, but of all the scams around, not the worst.