RSSOracle + Mozilla on Lightning
Its Oracles turn on the OSS bandwagon, Recent article in ZDNET discusses Mozilla & Oracle working together.
Ecerpts:
Mozilla and Oracle are keeping a joint venture under wraps, leading to speculation that the database giant may by planning to release an open source product.
The Mozilla Foundation revealed at the FOSDEM conference in February that the database giant had hired three people to work on Mozilla Lightning. This project, which aims to integrate Mozilla's calendar application Sunbird with its email application Thunderbird, is believed to be key to cracking the market dominance of Microsoft Outlook.
With Oracle reluctant to talk about its work with Mozilla, the industry has been left to speculate on whether Oracle plans to follow Novell's lead in releasing an open source collaboration product.
Gervase Markham, a Mozilla staff member, speculated at FOSDEM that Oracle's main motivation in working with Mozilla on the Lightning project is likely to be to create a competitor to Microsoft Outlook, and ultimately take market share away from Exchange.
"I think Larry Ellison wants to [give two fingers to] bill gates," said Markham at FOSDEM. "Larry feels that with small amount of investment and time he can make Bill Gates worried. The Exchange monopoly is based on the Outlook monopoly — people pay shed-loads of cash for Exchange. If we can provide an alternative to Outlook it will make Microsoft worried."
