My experience has been the opposite. Yes, you can get Oracle XE on a limited set of platforms (still no OS X support for any current Oracle databases), for free, although the default configs leave a lot to be desired. However that doesn't compare to the large number of free and/or open source Java projects, libraries, tech articles, forums, etc... that IBM has supported. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/.
You also need a registered account to do pretty much anything on Oracle's site, in stark contrast to IBM's developer tools and sites.
Also if Oracle's SQL Developer is them being friendly to devs, then I wish they wouldn't:) That thing is one of the ugliest, most prone to crash, DB tools I've ever used.
Which just came out on the 9th of April I think, which is how many years late? Also, it doesn't appear to install correctly unless you're running OS X Server. Fine for production, useless for doing development on my laptop with.
You also need a registered account to do pretty much anything on Oracle's site, in stark contrast to IBM's developer tools and sites.
Also if Oracle's SQL Developer is them being friendly to devs, then I wish they wouldn't:) That thing is one of the ugliest, most prone to crash, DB tools I've ever used.