Oracle deletes ex-Sun-CEO's blog

Oracle appears to have removed ex-Sun-CEO Jonathan Schwartz's blog from its web site. There was speculation that it had been removed as it was referred to in the ongoing Oracle/Google dispute over Java patents being infringed by Android's Dalvik virtual machine. In 2007, Schwartz congratulated Google on the launch of "their new Java/Linux platform, Android", describing the choice as adding to the momentum of the Java platform. The posting was mentioned in a Google exhibits listing.

But the reason may be simply down to bad management of web content: the URL blogs.oracle.com/jonathan/ is now showing up as the blog for an Oracle employee by the name of Jonathan Benoit, suggesting that Oracle overwrote Schwartz's blog. Benoit is yet to post on his newly acquired blog. Although Oracle appears to have removed all of Schwartz's blog entries though they can still be viewed on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Another Oracle related blog closure is that of Joerg Moellenkamp who has closed his Solaris oriented c0t0d0s0.org blog, which was home to the "Lesser Known Solaris Features" (LKSF) tutorial. Moellenkamp, an Oracle employee, says the offlining of the blog is not because of health issues, that there were no technical problems and no copyright issues, but beyond that he will not say why he has taken the decision. The LKSF tutorial has been saved from the shutdown and is available to download. The closure of the c0t0d0s0 blog does though reduce the already meagre number of Solaris blogs further.

It is worth noting that Oracle, as a company, has never been comfortable with employee blogging. Oracle appears to regard blogs as mostly a function of its public relations department and it is said that the complexity of working with the PR department to approve postings is sufficient that many either give up or don't try.

(djwm)