What if...?

At this stage, it is merely a rumour and speculation. And yet, it is not unprecedented. This could develop into move which is somewhat reminiscent to what Microsoft does to Novell---getting inside the city through Trojan horses, then spreading damage and mingling to wreak havoc.

According to this speculation, Oracle may acquire the Open Source database provider Ingres in order to better position itself against IBM. It's probably another case of weakening Open Source offerings. Oracle has already acquired some Open Source companies to create confusion and take away code that rivals depend on (e.g. BerkeleyDB and MySQL). It's a divisive move. They also tried to buy MySQL AB. A rather eccentric speculation said that they also want to lower the value of Red Hat in order to acquire the company.

In related news, Intel forms ties with an Open Source virtualisation company. It seems worrying that proprietary vendors try to squash Free and Open Source vendors through involvement that leads to paralysis. It remains to be seen if Novell will make an acquisition shortly. It has plenty of spending money---that which it received to compensate for inconveniences and compromises in its bizarre deal.