In my research I have found that acquisitions within the same layer of a stack do not payoff from a market evaluation perspective. Since Oracle is acquiring another database management company, what is the payoff here? Oracle's attraction here maybe to learn how to operate in the OpenSource and hybrid (open/proprietary) arena. If in the future every product has some opensource elements to it, how do companies manage IP issues? The other factor to consider is innovation. Do companies that support opensource development innovate better? Finally, regardless of the method used to develop code and innovate (open/proprietary), platform providers get a piece of the action. In the case of proprietary code it is licensing revenue and in the case of opensource code -- maintenance or support contracts.