“No one saw this coming. People talked about Oracle making its own Linux, or buying a Linux company (Ubuntu?). But, the news that Oracle is erasing Red Hat’s trademarks from Unbreakable Linux and supporting it for less than Red Hat is a bolt from the blue. Or, perhaps, I should say that Oracle is firing a shot at the heart of Red Hat, and commercial Linux? This really, really ticks me off.“ Apparently, Oracle announced that they will provide full enterprise support for Linux and so it competes with RH.
Oracle’s Red Hat Rip-Off
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well, it is a free market and open source at its best
No kidding.
I can get my Ford truck serviced at numerous facilities, not just Ford. I can buy an extended warranty for the truck that’s usable in places besides a Ford dealership. When I bought an iBook, the store offered me their own extended warranty over AppleCare.
So, all Oracle is doing is taking Linux support to the next level. They’re not going to bother with their own distro. Red Hat is a fine distro, and the market leader. Support Red Hat rather than inventing a new one.
Ellison made it clear last year that he had no intention of buying a Linux distro (like Red Hat). He basically said “Why should I buy them when they give it away for free?”.
And he’s right. Is expertise within Red Hat worth their market cap? Is the expertise available elsewhere, where Oracle can perhaps buy it “ala carte”? Because that’s all Red Hat has, is expertise. The software is given away, and therefore not an asset.
So, contrived example, say Oracle simply offered core team members at Red Hat, the “brain trust” so to speak, positions at his company, and gave them a large signing bonus. If these team members aren’t waiting to vest in Red Hat stock, or, simply, not already “well funded”, a fat check from Oracle can be VERY tempting.
If Oracle could get them at the insane price of $1M each, and got 10 members. That’s $10M total. A far cry from however many $B’s Red Hat may be worth on the market. Hell, they just plonked $450Mish for JBoss.
But, fundamentally, that’s Larry’s point. He doesn’t need Red Hat. He may need some key expertise, but since it’s Linux we’re talking about, Red Hat doesn’t even have a lock on that. I read somewhere else that Oracle has got 3 kernel developers from Novell. Guaranteed they didn’t cost Oracle billions of dollars.
Oracle gets the Linux for free, even Red Hats specific version of Linux. They just need some manpower to facilitate knowledge transder to spin up and train his already existing call support center and staff of technicians.
Far far cheaper than buying an existing mainstream distro.
No reason to be angry at anyone here, this is just the market at work.
Totally agree.
Also, he goes on to say that Oracle are rubbish at releasing bug fixes and that we can expect more of the same with “Oracle Linux” (Oraclux? Linacle?). This is a moot point because if the service is bad, people won’t buy it.
They will buy it if it comes bundled with the database. Take a look at this example (the prices are made up):
Red Hat Linux License 3000.00
Oracle Database License 5000.00
Oracle Linux License (bundled) 1000.00
Oracle Database License 5000.00
They just saved 2000.00 by getting the bundled version and that is enough for most companies to forget about Red Hat.
Funny, a better example is:
Red Hat Linux: $ 0/year
PostgreSQL: $ 0/year
Oracle: $0 for 30 days, must be licensed after by year
Red Hat cost for best Red Hat version and support: $2499/year
The best support possible for PostgreSQL: $22 500/year
Best support possible for Oracle Enterprise Edition, via Processor Perpetual licence: $44 888, one time fee
But those are just real prices, crazy, I know.
a) you don’t get RHEL for free (though you can get CentOS / WhiteBox for free)
b) With PostgreSQL for $O, you won’t get a phone number which you can call and talk about your screwed-up database
c) There are scenarios, where “big” DBs like Oracle and DB/2 are the only sensible solutions. I don’t think MySQL or PostgreSQL would handle multi-GB tablespaces stored in multiple datafiles… Sometimes it’s not “features”, it’s “how big can my DB be and still run and still be manageable”.
And sometimes it’s about having someone to call/blame when things break. In the end, it’s a free market – pay if it’s worth to you, don’t pay if it’s not worth.
Dude, are you blind or just plain stupid? I specifically listed the price to pay to have a phone number which you can call and talk about your screwed-up database.
That gives you someone to call/blame when things break. Are you just trying to be stupid?
No it’s not. It’s ugly business practices and reinventing the wheel at its worst.
I can guess at what’ll happen:
1.) This is all media hype and Oracle isn’t doing anything nearly this evil (the most likely).
2.) Oracle will make these grand claims about supporting old systems, and then not do it in 6 years when it’s a real issue and RedHat has closed its doors in bankrupcy.
3.) RedHat customers will recognize an impossible idea when they hear it and ignore Oracle’s offering until their marketing matches their product.
3a.) Oracle will then give up and claim Linux is dead, because they couldn’t sell it.
3b.) Oracle will fire its marketing department and hire a much smaller one, one which is instructed to listen to the engineers and not the salesmen.
What part of this is Ugly business practices?
Frankly, I’m surprised this didn’t happen a year ago.
Look at it from executive perspective:
Gee, I could really use an OS to bundle with my product, ensuring solid support from the iron up. I can control the whole software stack, and make a killing!
Gee, this other company that a lot of my customers run my product on has to give away it’s source code and they can’t charge for anything but support and the media it’s distributed on.
Gee, I could use their code that they have to release, pay a minimum for development costs now that the market is established and the high risk is gone, offer support for half the price they do, and get my entire high-margin, low maintenance software stack and charge more for full-stack support….
And it’s all completely legal, and doesn’t break any official agreements with have with this other ISV…. HRMmmmmmm….
DUH! NO F-ING BRAINER!
This is _not_ shady at all. This is _totally_ legit. I just find it funny how many GPL fan-boi idiots are just now getting upset that the thong panties they’ve been parading around in for years are just now starting to chafe their buttholes enough for them to realize it’s not the ‘social hack’ they once thought it was. You all just got pwned!
Maybe I should short-sell other vulnerable public OSS companies….
What a kick in the nads…but like the previous poster said. It is a free market, and this is how opensource works. I always thought Red Hat prices were a bit steep as it stood. They have been enjoying the premium pricing for some time now, I guess this will shake things up a bit.
What a kick in the nads…but like the previous poster said. It is a free market, and this is how opensource works.
Not really, and yes this is how OSS works.
Now a few serious questions.
…
How many of RH deployments are running Oracle? Not many. Nope, their gonads won’t suffer.
Would you buy a web/mail… server and count on support for those from Oracle? I know I wouldn’t.
Would you prefer Oracle DB would come in its own distro? Yes, I would. It would make it much easier to deploy and maintain (which was pain in the ass for now).
Now the final word from me. Linux was and it will be in thousand flavors. Sometimes it is just a basic router, sometimes SBS server and sometimes a full fledged distro. Redhat doesn’t own the market and controls the brand. And just as Oracle is now using their work, they use a lot of work from others. It is just how ordinary OSS coexistence and cooperation works. And if RH wouldn’t like this model, they wouldn’t be in this business.
How many of RH deployments are running Oracle?
I’d venture to say quite a few. It’s an immensely popular platform for Oracle and a primary cause for Oracle’s interest.
Would you buy a web/mail… server and count on support for those from Oracle?
Hell no! Moreover, I’ve dealt with Oracle support before for Oracle, and I’m sure I’d be better off with a third-party over Oracle to support their own product.
I don’t think RedHat has too much to worry about. If there’s one thing that bothers me about this is that my experience with Oracle thus far (as a client and as a once prospective employee that was turned off by what I learned on my visit) is pretty negative. They are a company built founded on a solid database product and have tried to branch out with dubious results. In my estimation, Oracle will get huge attention for this, do a half-assed job of it, and give nothing back to the community.
The thing is, they say they’re going to provide support for people who are also NOT running Oracle.
“Oracle will offer “full support” for Red Hat’s Linux distribution to both Oracle and non-Oracle customers, Larry Ellison, chief executive officer of Oracle Corp., said Wednesday. He was giving the closing keynote at his company’s OpenWorld conference in San Francisco.”
That’s interesting but it makes things a little confusing. You can’t download RHEL without a subscription for updates, not that I’m aware of anyway. So how would this work at all?
Why is it a kick in the nads? As you state its a free market. And in fact lack of imatators would probably indicate something negative about the size of market or rate of market growth.
The real one who is going to suffer here is Microsoft.
Linux now has another big name supporting it… the more big names that are supporting it, the fact is it means big businesses are going to feel more comfortable switching to it. Also, as its still under the GPL, this can help RedHat fix bugs faster if Oracle does it first, and if they are supporting older RHEL releases, thats going to make it a lot easier for RHEL to begin supporting their older releases for longer, which will make corporations even more comfortable to use Linux.
Finally, the last blow to Microsoft is if this has any level of success, its going to start to cause some price wars in the Linux enterprise support community, so prices of Linux support are about to drop fast, which is a huge part of what Microsoft uses to claim that Windows has a lower TCO then Linux. If this helps drop the TCO of Linux, and it will, Microsoft is going to suffer even more. This is just pure good news.
There’s no doubt this is all fair game in an open source world. The interesting question is if Red Hat can survive and thrive with such competition. One thing to consider is that Red Hat already puts a lot of money into development and gives a huge amount of code back to the community. All that code already ends up in competitors products (SuSE, etc), so it’s not like this is the first time their code will be used by a competitor.
In the worst case, the amount of money Red Hat has to invest in such development might be reduced by this move by Oracle. On the other hand, this might just further legitimize Linux in the eyes of even more businesses and end up helping Red Hat in the long run.
Interesting times…
Whartung has it right.
I have a lot of SUN equipment I manage – half of it is serviced through contracts with FUJITSU and the other are through SUN support.
I don’t see any difference in this announcment – the author makes it sound like ORACLE is coming out with there own BRANDED LINUX – that has been tried and failed more times than I can count by a multitude of companies, both big and small.
There are three major players in LINUX and you have to play with one of them at some point… RedHat, SuSE or any number of the DEBIAN variations (Ubuntu is by far the best, IMO).
Get over it! Write about something that really matters in technology instead of complaining about a companies strategy to support the underlying OS that supports their products.
Good for Oracle!
Bill
Several years ago Red Hat launched its own database product based on PostGres. But under pressure from Oracle, quickly dropped the product. Now this. Ouch.
Jezz..no offense, but you don’t know what your talking about.
#1) Its PostgresSQL ..http://www.postgresql.org/
#2) its open source
#3) RedHat did NOTHING you described, and in fact STILL distributes both PostgresSQL and MySQL on their CD’s.
#4) and it still rocks and is very popular in the open source world
#1) Its PostgresSQL ..http://www.postgresql.org/
Actually, It’s PostgreSQL
. It really makes sense to make sure that you get it right when you try to correct someone 
.
#3) RedHat did NOTHING you described, and in fact STILL distributes both PostgresSQL and MySQL on their CD’s.
You’re right, but perhaps the first comment(er) was thinking of the Red Hat Database ( http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/database/ ) Which runs on (doesn’t replace) PostgreSQL? But it seems that RHD is still going.
Stephen
Red Hat *did* launch its own database product based on PostgreSQL. The product was named RHDB. You can still find its website here:
http://sources.redhat.com/rhdb/
As you can see, there’s no recent update, and this product is essentially abandoned.
However, it’s the first time I hear about pressure from Oracle as a cause for RHDB failure.
No, actually the parent is right. Red Hat did indeed take PGSQL and create a product called Red Hat Database. Basically, it was a repackaged postgres and included a couple of frontends. RHEL postgres packages were pretty much just named rhdb and I believe the first spin of RHEL4 still called it rh-postgres but I could be wrong there.
What is the big deal…isn’t this the same as Whitebox, Centos, and about a dozen other Linux distros some commercial like ClarkConnect which are basically RedHat Enterprise with the logo’s/etc replaced?
This IS opensource you know, even RedHat can’t magically make their distro non-GPL. They just own the rights to their graphics and trademarks on the disks.
Usually the trolls are in the comments.
I was a bit surprised to see this, but then the more I thought about it the more it made sense. In the enterprise field, it is just like the cable and telecom companies; you bundle services.
The latest move by Oracle is an example of this, so is the purchase of PC-BSD. Also, Red Hat bought JBoss, Novell bought Suse, Mandrake and their slew of acquisitions, etc. However, I wonder if Oracle could have bought another Red Hat clone instead? It might have been worth it to pay for the knowledge of say Scientific Linux, or employ the former lead developers from Tao Linux or White Box Linux (I don’t think Oracle would be willing to take over the CentOS project).
This of course leaves Ubuntu playing all by themselves. If Ubuntu is serious about being an enterprise player, they are going to have to make a move. However, just what are they willing to do? There will be no more free CD’s shipped for Edgy, so Shuttleworth does have his limits with how much money he is willing to spend. His ego will also get in the way of being acquired by another company (which can be a good thing). So, what’s Ubuntu to do?
Correction sir: Mandrake and their slew of being acquisitioned.
Otherwise we wouldn’t have man-dribble errr mandivel errrr… what’s its name again?
Before we cry for Red Hat, let’s remember to seperate Red hat the Open Source Hero from Red Hat the must-show-growth-every-quarter public corporation. Don’t forget they consciously crossed a virtual line with the JBoss acquisition. They gave up their position as “trusted neutral partner” to become “potential middleware competitor.” It was a calculated risk, and one that I suspect they anticipated negative reaction but determined the gain was greater. That’s how business works. Oracle is simply taking a defensive position here. IBM responded similarly by jumping deeper into bed with Novell as their “trusted” linux partner, although they did it much more quietly, and would just as quickly kick them out if Novell gained similar middleware aspirations.
Now, whether it will pay off for Oracle remains to be seen. At least I’ll give them credit for being smart enough to not try and create or acquire their own distribution, that would have simply been a waste of resources.
But this is just business, and Red Hat is a business, not a touchy-feely community-supported non-profit organization being squeezed by heartless capitalist conglomerates. If they want to grow and successfully diversify in the enterprise space, they’d better be prepared to develop a thick skin and aggressive stance, or they will be eaten alive.
Edit: Typo.
Edited 2006-10-26 02:16
What’s the fuss about?
The author is wrong about support for Win2K, and Oracle does have a point about older versions of RHEL. True true, you can get updates as part of the contract, but who says a company wants to update all of its enterprise machines?
Anyway.. this is open source – competition is around. So what?
Oracle does have a point about older versions of RHEL. True true, you can get updates as part of the contract, but who says a company wants to update all of its enterprise machines?
Yes. I have seen (this year) servers running RHEL 2.1 below Oracle DB and Oracle EBSO. Upgrading to RHEL 3.x or even 4.x would have changed versions of glibc and Java, which in turn would trigger the need to fix things with the DB and EBSO. In the end, that would require a lot of testing and preparation and a rather long outage in the end.
Some installations are better off with patches for older releases of the OS than with upgrading/reinstalling it.
And Oracle seems to be promising just this.
3rd party support for Red Hat is nothing new, even for mega corporations. IBM for instance would be more than happy to sell you RHEL entitlements and provide their Linux SupportLine services for it. They too are cheaper than buying direct from Red Hat…
When you buy RHEL from IBM and other 3rd party support vendors/resellers, a portion of the money actually goes to Red Hat. That is the entitlement portion. Red Hat does not break out support from the entitlement, however the 3rd party supporters do. In the end, both Red Hat and the 3rd parties make money.
This move however is different because it seems that Oracle does not intend to sell you a “Red Hat entitlement”, but to repackage the RHEL distro. Which would mean that buying Unbreakable Linux means NO money goes to Red Hat. Further, if you already have Red Hat, then they will take over the support, even buying out your existing support contract from Red Hat. Meaning they intend to not only divert new customers from going direct to Red Hat, they also intend to steal the current ones away…
It’s interesting that Oracle is simply calling this a support move. But clearly it is more than that since they will be providing RHEL in both binary and source forms for free download from their website ala CentOS and Whitebox. However unlike those distributions, Oracle intends to actually write their own patches and release their own enhancements to RHEL (Unbreakable Linux)…
This has been obvious from the beginning:
“By doing this, Oracle not only wounds Red Hat, it serves notice to all the Linux businesses — Novell, Mandriva, Linspire, etc. — that a giant company can come along, and sweep their work and business plan away from them in a minute.”
And it sends a clear message to Corporate America: “Picking a distro is a crap shoot. Sure, one day RedHat is the number one Linux vendor … tomorrow it may be someone else. Why invest heavily in RedHat when it may disappear along with support any day. Stick with Microsoft. It will be here forever.”
And it sends a clear message to Corporate America: “Picking a distro is a crap shoot. Sure, one day RedHat is the number one Linux vendor … tomorrow it may be someone else. Why invest heavily in RedHat when it may disappear along with support any day. Stick with Microsoft. It will be here forever.”
Oh, god. What a lame comment. Even for NotParker and he deserves below zero standard.
p.s. Please, go to supermarket and buy your self a fresh pack of IQ. Old one seems to be used thoroughly.
Oh, god. What a lame comment. Even for NotParker and he deserves below zero standard.
Why do you think this comment is lame?
As SJVN says: “With this move, every Linux company is going to have to take a long, hard look at its business plans. Now, Red Hat and company may well survive this. As I have said earlier, it’s not like anyone really believes that Oracle does a good job at patching its own software.
For all that, Oracle does have the personnel it needs to support, and yes, advance Linux. Still, I don’t think this move is good for Linux in general.”
I think SJVN is being understated. This is disastrous for Linux. Oracle doesn’t care. They sell software that runs on Unix/Windows/Linux. They don’t care if they damage Linux. And they have.
Why do you think this comment is lame?
Fair question deserves fair answer.
Searching for the sentences just to promote MS as you always do is lame. But problem was you took completely missed statement from SJVN, turn it around as you felt it suited you and then ended up with lame and obvious comment on no basis.
I think SJVN is being understated. This is disastrous for Linux. Oracle doesn’t care. They sell software that runs on Unix/Windows/Linux. They don’t care if they damage Linux. And they have.
Nope, his comment is overstated not understated.
Why would it be disastrous for Linux (as Redhat is not Linux)? In this case it would be more disastrous for your dear MS and Oracle deployments on Windows. Suddenly, Linux would become out of the box Oracle solution and preferred in-house “just works” product.
Notice that disastrous is wrong word again. It is taking to account only computers with Oracle deployments, and those aren’t many. Their number is not noticeable.
Oracle does care, but about their solutions only. RHEL has 7 years of support and so does Windows (I won’t jump to numbers here). Problem for Oracle is that database servers are probably the last computers to get updated with new OS. Hardware is updated much more often than OS. 7 years is kinda few for Oracle.
Now look where you got it wrong
1. Linux distros were fragmented forever.
2. Specialized distros existed forever.
3. There was more SuSe deployments for Oracle than Redhat (Redhat Oracle deployments would account for about 30%). Does this mean you now predict Novell will go down the drain? And for Redhat that would mean 30% of how many (not many, let me tell you)? I can name my self for example. I’m using Redhat mostly, but my only Oracle deployment is on SuSe. Why? Because Oracle support team I talked to suggested it.
“And it sends a clear message to Corporate America”
Yeah, it sends the message “If you use Red Hat you can buy support from us even if Red Hat no longer exists.”
“Stick with Microsoft. It will be here forever.”
Sure, whatever you say chief.
The implication of part of his rant is that no-one provides backported fixes for other O/S’s.
Surely he knows better than that.
More on this at http://blogs.sun.com/tpenta/entry/sjvn_s_rant_on_oracle which I posted before I noticed the story here.
The bottom line is that if Oracle can provide a service that Red Hat is not willing to, then nobody has a right to call foul.
I wonder what SJVN would have said if instead of a large corporate doing this, it was a small startup.
alan.
Way i see this,it’s a early xmas for microsoft.Now that oracle has done this,whats from stopping microsoft from doing same thing and basically giving the kiss of death to corporate linux distro’s.
-microsoft opens linux support center
-hires top linux gurus (money talks)
-undercuts the corporate linux companies to point where there’s no money in it for them. (as it’s opensource,no real way to government laywers to scream antitrust)
-redhat,novell,ubuntu,ibm etc etc lose vast amounts of money and go bye bye
-businesses need reliable support for software thats companies will still be around
-microsoft defeats the linux at there own game
ps: bill and steve,you might want to make a note to send extra socks and underwear to larry for xmas 🙂
-microsoft opens linux support center
…
-microsoft defeats the linux at there own game
No, this wouldn’t kill Linux, this would LEGITIMIZE it.
If Microsoft decides to dump all their money and resources into supporting linux, what is preventing people from adopting it further? Linux isn’t a for-profit corporation – you can’t undercut it. Every time a for-profit company comes out to support Linux CHEAPER than another for-profit company, Linux benefits.
Edit: In the case of Oracle, Linux won’t be harmed – Red Hat will. Anyone that thinks Linux will be harmed by this isn’t really thinking clearly.
Edited 2006-10-26 04:24
“In the case of Oracle, Linux won’t be harmed – Red Hat will”
We might even make that “Red Hat *may* be harmed” since it’s not certain that they will. It’s not like Oracle is the first non-RH company to offer RH support.
Depending on how you look at it it may even be a boost for RH.
Is there no integrity left by big corporate America than to proudly announce that it is going to plagiarized someone else’s hard work? Sure we share source, but this smells of corporate slime.
Oracle could have purchased practically the entire Linux community, yet it has chosen to be a cheap clone of others hard work.
Oracle, why don’t you pull out of your large corporate ass some original hard work and contribute to the community something having unique merit and value? Oh, I get it, you can’t.
Oracle, Oracle, Oracle I am so disappointed, one with so much presumed talent, why have you not chosen to compete the old fashioned way and show us what you got!
Oracle’s recent move validates the value of Linux, Red Hat, open source and MS converts worldwide
and all the usual people on here have been out spouting crap.. talking to you notparker.
here is a quick, simple breakdown for you muppets.
one company CAN take a copy of Linux, and sell it and support services cheaper than another. so what ?
this will not kill linux
microsoft will not benefit one dollar from this.
one company can take a copy of linux, give it away free and give its support services away for free, so what ?
this will not kill linux
microsoft will not benefit one dollar from this.
microsoft cannot take a copy of linux, sell it, support it cheaper or for free, for these reasons.
microsoft built their business model around windows and office.
if they support linux, people will move to linux, and microsoft will loose windows sales.
if they make it a “microsoft linux” and that is the only one they support, then some people will stay with that, others will look around for a cheaper deal…. they have already migrated to linux after all.
microsoft cannot get their own systems releaed on time, ie vista.
and when it eventually does release vista, it will be tied up supporting that. vista is a nightmare at the minute and I cannot see that changing.
there is a public beta at the minute, try it, you will see how bad it is.
now… if a company came in and undercut microsoft, in everything they sold, windows, office, xbox, games, support, it could kill microsoft.
microsoft will not be here forever.
when, and I say when, microsoft goes down, who is going to release new windows ?
linux will be though, for one simple reason. it is open source. it cannot be killed.
anyone can take the source and release their version.
In the end, if Oracle needs a bug to be fixed, they have three choices: (1) wait and hope until Redhat fixes it, (2) submit a patch to Redhat, or (3) fix it in their own distro. So either Redhat will be in the lead and Oracle will have to depend on Redhat, or Oracle will need to fork. I’m not sure this is all bad for Redhat.
Possible answer form Red Hat:
Team up or buy EnterpriseDB. It is a commercial version of Postgresql which strives for Oracle compatibility. Offer existing costumers to migrate to this cheaper alternative.
We have a 2007 project at my fortune 40 to evaluate using EnterpriseDB, and MySQL to start to trim our Oracle use WAY down….Oracle wants to re-negotiate our corporate site license, and its gonna cost us many many millions….we use Oracle for EVERYTHING right now, you wannt put up a web site to keep track of the farts in the office, you use oracle…that will probably change in our company soon.
That subject line is the way RedHat has traditionally looked at things. This move adds yet more credibility to enterprise Linux, despite how some people might want to spin it. Does it pose a risk and a challenge to RedHat? Absolutely.
But there is nothing here that is a blow to Linux or OSS. On the contrary, this is what OSS is *about*. The fortunes of RedHat may flourish, be dashed, or be relatively unaffected by this move. Pure play open source is not an easy business model to get right. It’s not like there is a tried and true recipe. Real competition… fair, open competition… is very hard, because their are no laurels for the victor to rest upon.
One thing is pretty certain. OSS is here to stay. It is not going away. It is a natural and inevitable product of the easy collaboration made possible by the Internet. People like to credit individual people for making it a reality, and that’s valid. But if the people we think of as the OSS luminaries had not existed, the phenomenon would have occurred none-the-less, with a different cast of characters. It might have been delayed a bit, but it would have happened.
I’m a big RedHat fan. But RedHat != Linux.
This is about how an old school company that has associated with, and promoted Linux, is adapting, and about how that adaptation might or might not affect the leading Linux pure-play company.
Nothing more and nothing less.
I consider this a significant event. But, on the balance, a positive one.
We’ll see what happens. But if RedHat filed chapter 7 tomorrow, it’s not like all their talented employees would immediately drop dead. They would migrate elsewhere, and the landscape would change again.
I’m glad that most of the posters here got the difference between “a Linux company” and free, open source software.
While any given company may suffer under more competition, the software itself is hardly affected, it probably even benefits. Isn’t that beautiful? With FOSS, the user always benefits in the end. Thank you, RMS, for starting all this!
Wait a minute….if Oracle stars to provide their own patches, doesnt that suddenly start to make you DIFFERENT than RHEL and NO LONGER you have RHEL installed but something totally different?!!!?
Even Centos sticks strictly with the RedHat patches and distributes their patches one-for-one with RedHat’s….
I really enjoy the complete confusion of “Linux” and “Red Hat” in all the articles linked (and in turn those linked from that). Does Oracle support *any* Linux or only Red Hat? Good luck making heads or tails of that. Even the Oracle Unbreakable Linux FAQ ( http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/ubl-faq.pdf) is confused.
The interesting question to me is whether developing the software creates an advantage in supporting it.
RedHat doesn’t really sell software, it sells support. Thats the basis for their busines. RedHat and the other Linux powerhouses are all significantly involved in the development of open source software. RedHat uses money from its support contracts to pay developers to work on Linux.
Oracle, on the other hard, isn’t a major contributor to open source projects, and I don’t expect that to change. To them, Linux is just an OS that Oracle can run on. Period.
If developing Linux truly improves a company’s ability to support it, then RedHat should do fine. Oracle support will be inferior and won’t be successful. If not, where does that leave Linux as the contributing companies crumble or pull back development resources and focus solely on support? Who pushes Linux forward? Does this turn into a real-world example of the prisoner’s dilemma from ECON101?
Does this turn into a real-world example of the prisoner’s dilemma from ECON101?
It already has. GPL promotes this kind of behavior. Frankly, I think it’s hilarious. Then again, I’m not an investor in RedHat. Bwhaahahaaaaa.
You’ve used it before in your advertising of your DB products — and they were broken even before they were released to the public. Bad karma.
This will promote competition and lower prices. I don’t see anything wrong with that, as long as Oracle isn’t using predatory pricing or other cheap tricks to steal market share.
Didn’t see it coming? Since Red Hat bought Jboss Oracle has been talking smack about RH, it’s not the method I thought they’d use, but it seemed inevitable that Oracle was going to do something
Linux is all about sampling, remixing,throwing new cover art on it, and selling it as something new. Its a beautiful thing. One of the best damn distro’s out there is Ubuntu, which is really just Debian that has been streamlined, repackaged, and made into something usable.
Right about now, RedHat’s product line is taking a big fat one up the tailpipe.
And by products I mean their ‘services’ division. It’s going to be increasingly hard to fund further development if they’ve got a competitor selling support for the same distribution as they have at half their price.
RedHat employees, I’d brush up your resume. In six months time you might need it.
My prediction: Two years from now as RedHat’s stock is hovering around $5/share, Oracle sweeps in with an $6/share hostile takeover bid.
Seriously people, this is what happens you mix GPL with Capitalism. People get stabbed in the back. GPL only works when you don’t have a vindictive bastard in the chain.
One
Raging
Asshole
Called
Larry
Ellison
No worries, Karma will get them the end. Postgress
is evolving well, Mysql is evolving well. 10g is a pig on resources, AJAX is pretty damn effecient. The Open Source database engines are becoming very scalable.
That’s why they bought out Sleepy Cat, to attempt to kill MySQL. But they failed. Hopefully GPL3 may
stop Oracle in thier tracks. After all Linux was never about the money.
It doesn’t matter whether Oracle are effectively distributing CentOS, it’s the support for the product that counts. If you think Oracle can deliver decent enough support for Linux then you’ll entrust your business to them and their expertise; if not, you’ll stick with Red Hat or whoever else makes your distro (you might even be rolling your own). If this is like any of the other Linux initiatives from Oracle, I expect it to be forgotten history within a few years – claims of Red Hat’s imminent bankruptcy are absurd.
And as for the “why buy them when you can have their product for free?” argument – anyone who has worked in the services business will tell you that the value isn’t in the product. It’s not as if anyone (with a clue) was under any illusion, especially post-dot-com, about Red Hat’s business model.