Oracle Buys Finnish Open-Source Developer

NEW YORK (10/07/2005) -- Oracle scooped up another small technology company on Friday, announcing its acquisition of Finnish open-source database technology developer Innobase. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Innobase, based in Helsinki, is the creator of InnoDB, an add-on storage engine for MySQL. InnoDB is distributed under the GNU GPL (General Public License) open-source license. The software is bundled with MySQL through a contractual agreement that comes up for renewal next year; Oracle said it expects to negotiate an extension of that contract.

"Oracle intends to continue developing the InnoDB technology and expand our commitment to open source software," Charles Rozwat, Oracle's executive vice president in charge of database and middleware technology, said in a prepared statement. "Oracle has already developed and contributed an open source clustered file system to Linux. We expect to make additional contributions in the future," he added.

Oracle, headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, has arranged around a dozen acquisitions in the past year, most of them significantly smaller than its blockbuster, multibillion-dollar PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems buys. Other recent purchases include supply-chain logistics software maker Global Logistics Technologies, retail optimization software developer ProfitLogic, database performance enhancement technology company TimesTen, and a majority stake in Indian banking software vendor i-flex Solutions.