Resisting Incorporation and Reclaiming the Commons : The Case of Oracle and Sun Microsystems

This chapter provides a detailed case study of the Oracle Corporation’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems and its effect on free and open source software (FLOSS) communities that worked on projects sponsored by Sun Microsystems. The chapter specifically explores the politics involved in negotiating boundaries between FLOSS communities and the corporations that sponsor their projects. The focus on politics here is not simply concerned with governance structures; it is also concerned with the ways in which FLOSS communities can assert their interests against unwanted corporate attempts to influence production within their community. To illustrate these dynamics, I focus on the history of three FLOSS projects: OpenSolaris, MySQL, and OpenOffice. I argue that the unique characteristics of FLOSS production enabled these communities to leverage their collective labour power against unwanted corporate influence.