Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 17th Apr 2006 18:36 UTC, submitted by Flatline
"US software maker Oracle is considering launching a version of the Linux operating system and has looked at buying one of the two firms dominating the technology, the Financial Times newspaper reported on Monday. As part of a recent study of the open-source software market, Ellison told the newspaper, Oracle had considered buying Novell, which after Red Hat is the biggest distributor of Linux."
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RE[3]: Bill Gates laughing all the way to the bank
by segedunum on Tue 18th Apr 2006 12:17
in reply to "RE[2]: Bill Gates laughing all the way to the bank"
Member since:2005-07-06
Now what would happen when Oracle starts pushing their distribution? IBM will counter with their own distribution to counter Oracle in the database and application server space. And then all of a sudden, you will have HP, CA, Dell, SAP, etc. and everyone else pushing their own "Enterprise" solution that does not help their competitor.
No actually. People will continue to target the market leader, Red Hat, and Oracle could even take Red Hat's software and create their own compatible distribution. Although, most Linux distributions tend to be fairly compatible anyway.
There's a big difference between creating your own distribution and people actually using it though.
Member since:
2006-03-15
"Oh, so it isn't fragmented now? That won't happen with Linux in the same way as Unix, because Linux is not a proprietary world. If Oracle fails and creates a huge mess, which they will do if anything happens, then someone else will just pick up the gauntlet. The world just doesn't revolve around Novell (although they act like it)or Oracle regarding Linux, and Red Hat will never be another Microsoft. That's the real problem for Microsoft."
No, it isn't fragmented now. In the enterprise space, you have two Linux distributions, SuSE and RedHat. IBM, Sun, Oracle, HP, and every other developer targets these two distributions. Now what would happen when Oracle starts pushing their distribution? IBM will counter with their own distribution to counter Oracle in the database and application server space. And then all of a sudden, you will have HP, CA, Dell, SAP, etc. and everyone else pushing their own "Enterprise" solution that does not help their competitor.