Oracle names Open-Source Evangelist

Oracle has hired a Chief Open Source Evangelist, named Omar Tazi, who vowed that Oracle would be contributing more to the open-source community.

Tazi, who had been the CEO of XML infrastructure software company Orbeon, joined Oracle this month, according to his blog.

The creation of the position reflects Oracle's plan to boost its involvement in open-source projects, Tazi said.

"Let's face it; Oracle is known as an active contributor to the JCP (Java Community Process). Oracle has also been known as a big supporter of OSS (open-source software) on the consuming side. But the reality is that Oracle is behind on the giving back side. Well, we are working on that and I am here to change this perception," Tazi wrote. "Soon Oracle will be the largest software vendor actively involved with the open source community."

Oracle is a major backer of the Linux operating system -- its 10g grid databases are designed to combine the processing muscle of many commodity x86 hardware servers, running either Linux or Windows.

Earlier this year, the company has also boosted its participation in the Eclipse Foundation and increased support for some open-source development tools, including the Apache MyFaces project.