Following our story last week that Oracle was laying off most of the Java Mission Control Team after open-sourcing the product, a former Oracle employee provided us with some additional information regarding the turn of events.

Even though the Mission Control dev team was fired, Oracle continues development and maintenance on Mission Control in India. It seems (unconfirmed) like there will initially be only two half-time engineering positions allocated for that.

This is not entirely a surprise. The Java product org at Oracle has been in need of more resources and funding for a long time, and has been kept at a headcount that many feel is too low. There also has been additional "trimmings" from time to time. The support organization for Java generates revenue, but likely for budgetary/management reasons, this hasn't affected the Java product group headcount much. There seems to be a lack of understanding at upper management layers on why Java platform development within the product org actually is important and linked to future revenue.

There are still several external outcomes that might be beneficial for Mission Control and help keep the product alive. One would be if an external party snapped it up and continued development, now that it's open source. The Red Hat Thermostat team could be such an actor, but I believe there are several others.

InfoQ approached Oracle for an official statement, but they declined to comment on this story. Readers can also keep up to date with all Java-related news by visiting the InfoQ Java homepage.