Oracle and Open Source

Acknowledgments

As you might expect with a book of this kind, a tremendous number of people from the open source community have helped us put this book together, including many of the creators of the actual tools discussed here. We cannot thank them enough (although we’ll do our best). We also are very grateful to the whole O’Reilly editorial and production team, including Debby Russell, our editor; Leanne Soylemez, the production editor; Ellie Volckhausen, who designed the cover; Rob Romano, who created the figures; and Caroline Senay, who helped throughout the entire process.

From Andy

When the opportunity to write this book first arose (its original spark was an idea for writing just a single chapter in a book on Oracle design tools), I never expected that we would cover so many different areas. Originally, I thought we would cover Perl, perhaps Tcl, and then round it all off with Apache. But as we dug down into the histories and uses of each tool, we went off on all sorts of different tangents. We found ourselves digging into an enormous variety of application areas, including Python, PHP, GTK+, Java (to our surprise), and many more. It was like being in a neverending Aladdin’s cave of software delights, where every box of jewels opened up into yet another gold-lit cave of Oracle treasure. It has therefore been both a pleasure and a privilege to explore and chart these caves for you. We’ve been especially grateful to get help along the way from so many of the original creators of these inspiring tools. We’ve also benefited tremendously from the knowledge and inspiration of other reviewers and coworkers from Oracle Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Intel, and Oriole Corporation (among others), who all gave freely of their own time and thoughts. I would like to thank everyone who has helped us, and I truly hope they feel that we’ve done justice both to their development work and to their review of this book.

I’m dreading the bar bill, but without the following people, my half of the book would just not have been possible: Bruce Albrecht, Kevin Brannen, Tim Bunce, Alan Burlison, Alligator Descartes, Stuart Duke, Robin Dunn, Dave Ensor, Stéphane Faroult, Steven Feuerstein, Andy Gillen, Russell Herbert, Kevin Kitts, Jonathan Leffler, Stephen Lidie, Thomas Lowery, David B. Moffett, Marcelo Ochoa, John Ousterhout, Ezra Pagel, Ian Pilgrim, Tom Poindexter, Bill Pribyl, Alan Ranger, Eric S. Raymond, Axel Schlüter, Steve Shaw, Alex Shnir, Milan Sorm, Richard M. Stallman, Jared Still, Richard Sutherland, Bernard Van Haecke, Guido van Rossum, Mike Wilson, and Charles Wolfe.

I would also like to thank our omniscient editor Debby Russell, who asked all of the questions I’d hoped nobody would spot, nailed all my covertly attempted 2 A.M. fudges, and generally sculpted my incoherent ramblings into something approaching semi-reasonable English. Debby basically made this book into one I would really love to buy myself (if I hadn’t already cowritten it).

Finally, and most importantly, I would like to dedicate every single one of the words I have written in this book to my wife, Sue, and our children, Ross and Ellie. When normal fathers were out pushing their children on swings, attending birthday parties, and helping load the washing machine, this one could only be glimpsed surrounded by books and wires in a darkened room with the shutters down, tapping at a keyboard for God, Harry, England, and Saint George. I hope that I can repay the faith, time, and patience they have indulged me with over the last year and make it up to them all. I’m going to be spending a lot of time in Disneyland!

From Sean

I’d like to thank Stéphane Faroult, Mark Gallay, and Gunnar Hellekson for their meticulous attention to the technical review of the book. I would be remiss if I didn’t also thank the authors of the various tools covered in my sections of the book, including Alvaro del Castillo, Matthew Chappee and the Orasoft team, Nick Gorham, Chris Hardie, Stephan Heinze, Michael Lausch, Sean MacGuire, Vivien Malerba, Stewart McGlaughlin, Rodrigo Moya, Matias Mutchinick, Frederic Peters, Tobias Ratschiller, Klaus Reger, Jose Miguel Ronquillo, Adam vonNieda, and Chris Wiegand. And, of course, thanks go to the open source community as a whole, without which we wouldn’t be here.

I’d also like to thank Andy, whose idea got us started writing this book, and whose ongoing energy kept us motivated and moving, and Debby Russell (and others on the O’Reilly staff), for recognizing and accepting our idea and encouraging us to do our best. Finally, I’d like to thank my parents, Joan and Ray, for encouraging me in computers and for sending me to good schools. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.