March 18, 2008 9:00 AM PDT
Oracle's XQilla open-source contribution and the art of PR
Oracle just announced its contribution of the XQilla XQuery Engine under the Apache open-source license. There are two things that I like about this:
- It's an open-source contribution and demonstrates that open source isn't purely Machiavellian at Oracle and
- It's the best press release I've seen in a long time.
On the former point, Ken Jacobs and others within Oracle's open-source ranks would suggest that I've been looking in the wrong places if I think Oracle is fairly mercenary with regard to open source. Fair enough.
But take a look at the press release (link above) to grok my second point. I've never seen a press release like this, completely in bullet-point format. What a refreshing change. Just the facts....
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
