How to throw away US$7.4B

On 15 April 2011, Oracle announced that it would turn OpenOffice.org into a community only project, and that a commercial version would not be distributed.


Larry Ellison used to make pretty smart decisions.

Sun's hardware was high end. High Performance machines that are almost at the bleeding edge of computer research.  There are few customers in this area, and they are both price conscious, and task conscious.  For sheer number crunching, a Beowulf cluster of PS3s is more cost effective.  OTOH, when you need to store several petabits of data, Sun's hardware was more cost effective.  This is hardware that geeks  dream about, but usually don't have as their home server, much less personal desktop system.

By not including drivers that hooked directly into the products that Oracle distributes, Oracle failed to provide its customers with a reason for migrating from Microsoft Office to Oracle Office.


More pointedly, Oracle sales people could have thrown in a gratis copy of Oracle Office with each seat license that was negotiated.

When Oracle bought Sun, it acquired a company with:
* A hardware division;
* An operating system that had a very dedicated user base;
* An office suite that had a large and dedicated user base;
* A programming language that is extensively used;

These are things that Oracle could have used to cut off Microsoft's oxygen supply from the  high end market side.  FLOSS, especially Linux and OOo were cutting off Microsoft's oxygen supply from the low end market. (Look at Microsoft's SEC filings, to see how precarious Microsoft's financial picture really is.)


The community base of the operating system abandoned Oracle, once it became clear that Oracle and communication were exclusively mutual concepts.

The community base of the office suite abandoned Oracle, once it became clear that Oracle could neither communicate, nor manage anything.

Then Oracle sued Google over Android and Java.  A clear demonstration that it does not grok the fundamentals of computer programming.

You have to look at Oracle and wonder:  "What is it thinking?"  Intrinisically, purchasing Sun was a good decision. However, every step Oracle took, seemed designed to maximize the amount of money, and goodwill that could be thrown away.  Not just the US$7.4B it spent on Sun, but both post-acquisition costs and pre-acquisition costs.  It also threw away all of the goodwill it purchased from Sun. Based on its own merits, Oracle has had no customer goodwill for more than a decade.

The 15 April announcement is merely Oracle's admission that they threw away everything that they purchased from Sun.