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The Open Sourcing of Oracle
Thanks to Simone for pointing out this article by Andy Duncan regarding Oracle and its relationship to Open Source. The article starts out with background, and the metaphor to the Italian Renaissance is a bit odd, but I do think that this is a path Oracle is looking to walk down - what do you all think?
At the small silicon valley company where I work, which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty, we (well, the bigwigs, of course, I'm not this brain-damaged) have decided to base our offerings at least initially on oracle rather than one of the myriad Free and non-Free alternatives simply because the thinking is that customers would think it odd if we used anything else. Never mind that other databases cost less and perform better, and the the database is in our case invisible to the customer. It's just that silly. I shit you not.
PHP works like out of the box with MySQL and PostgresSQL. With Oracle and Informix, there some work to do before you get it to run.
If one is paying the massive amounts of money for Oracle, then they are either
a) buying a system that relies on Oracle as being there for the backend
b) Planning on using some more development tools than PHP - possibly writing things as stored procedures in the database
c) know enough of what the hell they are doing that it doesn't matter.
Having something like PHP working with it is probably the least of their worries - that is until after they get it all installed and find the app they bought doesn't provide everything and need to develop some more stuff for it.
I run a large Oracle database and two smaller ones. The big one is used by a student records package (Banner). All the interaction is done via Oracle Forms or stored PL/SQL procedures. There are a few scripts here and there written in Perl for automating some things.
One of the small databases is used by Remedy helpdesk software, and the other is used for any web applications people want to develop (normally with ASP/ODBC).
Oracle will provide you and your system with 24/7/365 support from highly trained individuals, for the "ridiculous" price you pay for it. Again, it's all a matter of how much your downtime costs you. If you're Ebay, Amazon, etc, downtime costs big bucks. It makes sense to have that level of support available for their business. If you're a weblog, downtime costs you very little, comparitively speaking. Paying for Oracle in that situation doesn't make a lot of sense. PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc. don't cost a lot up front, but if your business model depends on multiple transactions per second, aren't necessarily the best choice on the odd chance that things screw up.
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
Pardon me for spoiling your FUD, but:
Maybe you should try using these databases before discounting them. Just because MySQL does not have transactions or row-level locking does not mean other 'free' RDBMS do not. As far as your claim that 'you tried'. What, exactly, did you try? Maybe the 'experts' you hired were stupid or incompetent. Maybe your architecture is inefficient. Maybe a hundred other things caused these problems and you incorrectly thought it was the fault of the database.
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"In the land of the brave and the free, we defend our freedom with the GNU GPL."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
From the page: "In Oracle & Open Source, we concentrate on: Where to get today's open source base technologies and application tools; how to install them; how to connect them to Oracle; and how to modify them, should you wish to do so, to suit your own requirements"
In fact they "didn't try to address the future of open source, particularly in terms of its relationship to commercial software"
But I guess you cant expect the /. editors to check up on the facts can you. And after all you are only here for pro Linux/OSS and anti MS bias aren't you ...
DWR is Ajax for Java
> Why the hell are you posting articles like this? As far as I can see it's just a blatent advert for their book. You've
> even put "not any time soon" in the intro.
I found this article interesting not for the insights it allegedly provides for Oracle's relationship to Open Source, but for how Tim O'Reilly apparently is trying to sell the suits on Open Source.
O'Reilly appears to be attempting to act an ambassador between the hacker community, & the suits. Look how he involved himself in the Amazon 1-click contraversy, on one hand decrying the abuse of the patent system, while on the other providing Jeff Bezos a face-saving way out of this mess. Likewise, he has hired Larry Wall, who maintains the Perl programming language, as a full-time person.
It would appear that the subtext of this article is that O'Reilly is attempting to persuade Ellison to play nicely with Open Source, to act like a Renaissance prince & patronise Open Source. And if Ellison fails to get from this suggestion the ego strokes needed to make this work, then at least the idea is planted like a seed in the minds of other software moguls.
And if this seed falls on fallow ground? Worst case is that O'Reilly gets to write an ``I told you so" article when these proprietary companies slip into Chapter 11.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I should hope not. Pedophilia is absolutely loathsome, and...
Oh wait. You forgot a comma.
As it stands, the postgresql project has been advancing very rapidly, and is getting extrememly close to beating Oracle in functionality. If Oracle doesn't react to this in the next few years, they're going to start taking serious hits in revenue.
Unfortunately, going open source is only *one* way they can react. Rather than going "open" they might go "free", that is, gratis. Using the db binary as a loss leader for other products (including support) wouldn't be the siliest thing they could do, and it would help to stay ahead of the *really* free competition for some time.
The Great Bridge benchmarks, Postgresql beat Oracle on speed slightly (Bruce Momjian confirms this in this interview: http://lwn.net/2001/features/Momjian/).
Version 7.1 has just been released, with the big news being the addition of outer-joins. I understand that replication is one of the next targets (and given the speed that these guys have been working at, I would expect it to be in the next rev).
From The postgresql site (http://www.postgresql.org):
Key New Features and Capabilities of Version 7.1 Include:
Other than being an advertisement for some book, it looks like he's says that companies like MS and Oracle won't be historically reknown in the long run. Maybe he's right about that (although he didn't explain his reasoning), but it doesn't follow that Oracle should do it. Sometimes when someone's name survives on the lips of people centuries later, it has just as much to do with their failure as their success.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Windows 2000 simply didn't take billions to write. It's about as complex as other modern OSes, multi-million dollar projects, sure, but no more.
However, Microsoft has made billions from it (and NT 4.0 before it).
They do this at a moderately low unit cost, why? Because once the development costs have been paid, they simply dump bits onto a $.10 disk and throw a cardboard box around it. The hologram is probably the most expensive thing in the package.
Microsoft, Apple, Sun, and IBM have all written (and bought, etc) OSes, of varrying complexity. Microsoft's isn't better than all of those, and it didn't cost significantly less. So why did they make money? They burned a few million copies more.
Wealth nowadays isn't necessarily from physical objects. Not to say it's not real and valid, but there is a difference between making ten physical items and making one piece of IP and running off nine copies.
Mod parent up. Very funny.
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E_NOSIG
Agreed. I mean, the very idea that Python, Perl, PHP, and TCL of all things had anything to do with Sun's stance on Java is just ridiculous. TCL?!? Python, Perl, and PHP don't really compete in the same space as Java, but TCL is just really stretching things. Of course, they do have a book on TCL programming to sell...
It was just an attempt to plug their books. The arguments were very weak. I mean, with all the Oracle developers out there, open sourcing their database products would just be a road to having their support sales gutted by a crop of instant competitors pushing their own erstwhile products. Oracle isn't that stupid.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Ok i'll buy that. If you need massive scalibility then you ought to go with oracle. But that's only 10% of the businesses in the world. For everybody else in this world postgres or interbase will do just fine and won't cost a dime. Interbase is especially attractive for the windows crowd because it's got lots of great GUI tools.
War is necrophilia.
I agree with everything you said except for one thing. It won't take years. Great Bridge, nusphere, borland, SAP etc are already providing serious support for open source databases. Postgres has gone through two MAJOR revisions in under a year during which time it gathered an astonishing number of enterprise features including a few which oracle does not offer.
My guess is that in two years nobody will be able to charge for databases. MS-SQL server is being squeezed from the bottom by open source and from the top by oracle and IBM. I predict that pretty soon they'll pull an IE and give theing away in order to cut the air supply of oracle. Oracle will have to drastically cut their prices or open source it just to spite MS.
War is necrophilia.
"In an entirely unrelated point, notice that the same guy then sings the praises of Oracle for involving itself with free software, while they keep their DB entirely proprietary and shackled with the sort of licensing MS would be roundly denounced for."
What's wrong with that. You judge companies the same way you judge people. If somebody is a decent guy and but has a bad habit (maybe he smokes) you don't go around bitching about the smoking. If another person is an evil bastard who likes to beat up on everybody then you may mention the fact that along with being an evil basted he also smokes.
MS is an admitted enemy of open source. Oracle wants to be friends and is trying to get to know them better. Of course you would critisize people who call you communist, un american and hippies and would prefer to hang out with people who think you might be OK to go to the movies with.
War is necrophilia.
I don't disagree with you. Of course the 10% provides more revenue. But for the 90% of the businesses in the world who have less then a few hundred employees postgres or interbase is great. In the mac world you have openbase or frontbase both of which are quite capable and cheap. For most businesses SQL server is overkill and a waste of money. they would be just fine with an open source product and they could always upgrade later on if they need to.
War is necrophilia.
Hemos wrote:
<i>Thanks to Simone for pointing out this article by Andy Duncan regarding Oracle and its relationship to Open Source. The article starts out with background, and the metaphor to the Italian Renaissance is a bit odd, but I do think that this is a path Oracle is looking to walk down - what do you all think? </i>
<BR><BR>
Now, "this" clearly refers to the article, not to anything else. So, yes, you are rude for insulting tcharron, and wrong for not reading Hemos's blurb.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
It's 2:00am and your database is corrupt. If you go back to tape you will loose a half day of transactions. You then realize that the free database that you just bet your business on, doesn't have any real 24X7 support. Have a nice day. Hope that your free tape backup solution works just as well... Everything looks great until the sh*t hits the fan...
Wrong: http://www.greatbridge.com/product/support.php
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
-performance
0 8-14-008-01-PR-MR-SW
Oh? http://apachetoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2000-
If you need proof, you need to graduate college.
You mean, if I don't believe your corporate propaganda, I must be ignorant? Well, I guess that's what Mark Twain meant by "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
Hm, or maybe you're just not *allowed* to give proof, because Oracle refuses to allow companies to publish benchmarks of their software?
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
SuperID
Free Database Hosting
He says that he's worked in Oracle, so he has some insight.... I really have to question that.
He only worked as an external, in the UK data center - that very far removed from the real
strategy and planning at Oracle. I worked for Oracle for 6 years, including working in their
HQ in Redwood Shores - and I can tell you, if you're not in the HQ, then you might as well
be working for a different company.
Really, this is just his personal belief, with no real basis. Not that I'm saying that one day
Oracle won't go open source, but there's no evidence for it at the moment.
My personal observations are that Oracle has moved on from focusing solely on the rdbms side
of things for their revenue, and they're putting more resource into building the applications side
of the business. Back in the early 90's, Larry saying (at least internally) that the database was
their main focus, and that their applications were only a side show. Recently, Larry has been
publically pushing Oracle's applications, focusing more of the company on sell apps.
So, I'd say that Oracle is making the core database less important, revenue wise, these days,
and maybe they could open source it in the long run, but I don't seem them changing anything for
many years to come.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
GCC being strict.
long k[]={0,178}; char*p=(char*)&k[1]; main(){while(p---(char*)k) putchar(72+((k[1]>>(p-(char*)k)*2)& 3|(!((p-(char*)k)&1)<<2) ));}
G.
That's not what he meant. I interpreted that statement as: if you need proof, stop playing with toy systems and try rolling out a large, real-world, distributed, scalable (insert as many other features as your application needs) production database, one which your business depends on otherwise you go out of business, using your favourite open source DMBS and a high-end commercial one like Oracle and see which one does the job adequately.
Of course, you may have to wait for a hardware failure, but that's okay, it'll happen within six months or so.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Simple. The same reason you go with Cisco.
So why on earth would Oracle go open source and give away their software for free?
2nd point. The article claims that Sun is moving towards Linux. I dispute this claim. Solaris is the flagship at Sun and will be for the next 5 years.
Someone you trust is one of us.
And please don't bring up MySQL or postgreSQL (you haven't so far, and I am grateful). If you want cheap web transactions fine, but I am talking about true DB apps where you need row-level locking, rollback, transactions, etc.. all the things That the above mentioned RDBMS's have. I use MSSQL behind a server that gets about half a million hits a day, and it is fine. Granted the machines are dual proc powerhouses, but it runs great. I have Oracle at my clients who have several thousand employees accessing financials. Nothing else could be as solid and run this.
I say this because we
Anyway, you know what I'm sayin. Right tool for the right job in the end.
Where is the benefit for oracle to OSS? It uses free tools to draw in casual developers, who then become Oracle DBA's. But why would they throw away years of engineering just to give it all away? That's ridiculous. Oracleis one of the most profitable companies in the world. That won't change. Just because a bunch of teenagers don't think it is worth the money, doesn't mean that the people with the money to spend on it agree. There is a reason Oracle can charge per/cpu licensing. It ain't because it sucks kids.
I make my living promoting Open Source tools. For most of our systems, PostgreSQL is adequate. The lack of Left and Right joins makes me want to shoot myself occaisionally, and we are limited in our ability to scale, but the product works, and works well.
We can even support our tools on MySQL, but we'd have to make a lot of changes because we have database appications, and we'd have to change them to MySQL applications because MySQL isn't really a database, it's a storage format that is retrievable via SQL.
However, Oracle kicks the shit out of these low-end toys.
Hands down, they are number 1, by far.
Open Source databases are not ANYWHERE close to catching up. MySQL is a simple database whose entire reason for existance is powering websites. If you are a programmer, NOT a database designer, and you think that a database will help you store your data better than files and AWK, you use MySQL.
PostgreSQL is at least a properly designed system, but it is limited.
However, despite NEITHER database approaching Oracle, we have decided that Open Source will overtake them?
This is arragance beyond belief.
I don't get it, what Open Source product has been SO successful that it dominates everything?
The closest is Apache, but while it is on a lot of servers, it isn't as well represented in the top traffic sites. Apache is the closest to leading its field of any package.
Linux? Not a shot in hell. Linux doesn't lead in ANY market. Desktop, Microsoft Owns that. Unix Server market: owned by Sun. Unix Workstation Market: MAYBE won by Linux, but Apple OS X is likely to own that by the end of the year.
Let's be real people. Open Source Products right now are getting better. Whenever they reach your "good enough" level, then you can use them. I need certain features, PostgreSQL provides them. As much as I acknowledge that Oracle is better, PostgreSQL meets my needs and is cheaper.
However, to suggest that Open Source will win and dominate everything is kind of silly. This Manifest Destiny, that we will in the long run own the world is kind of silly. It seems that the areas Open Source has "won" have been small servers/daemons (sendmail, bind, etc.) where the open source version does the trick, the needs are limited, and therefore there is limited value added options.
However, let us understand where open source packages are good and where they need work. The big-three software titans will be remembered as the Carnegies, Rockafellers, etc., of the early computer era. However, to be deifying Linus this early is kind of silly, don't you think?
Alex
We may actually be running 7.1, I code, not sysadmin. Lots of our code was written before that upgrade. Thanks for the tips, but lots of people have told me.
Alex
Most of comercial products are in this stage and the companies will think twice before releasing the code just to be exploited and thrown out. The only one who would benefit at this point are competitors.
We are following the open source movement kind of closely at Oracle and I am sure that if there would be a way how to gain any profit by open sourcing any of the great bunch of products, Oracle would do it immediatelly.
Of course any opinions expressed here are just mine and mostly likely different from these of Larry Ellison or anyone else in the company :)
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
But databases are NOT the point. Oracle is offering complete solutions. Its not just the database, its complete application server, soon also development environment, its CRM and ERP and everything tightly integrated and cooperating. As far as I would like to, I don't see open source products even started on this line.
For some parts of what Oracle offers you have open source alternatives, though still few years behind in the development, but there are whole parts of Oracle solutions where there are no alternatives in Open source whatsoever.
And I will tell you when will be the right time for Oracle to start to worry about opensourcing its database. At the point when first bank of the world top10 will adopt ANY open source database. Not sooner, but not even later.
Of course any opinions expressed here are just mine and mostly likely different from these of Larry Ellison or anyone else in the company :)
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
chug chug
I think this is known as a strategic partnership. It is in Oracle's interest to run it's software on a large number of platforms, and also to run on free operating systems. That way, corps can cut some costs on paying for Oracle and solaris/windows. More money goes to Oracle, or a larger percentage of the price of deployment. In effect, the database layer becomes the important platform, not the OS.
However, i'm sure they want to keep charging a premium for their proprietary database and app server software, as long as they can.
Plus, it's a bonus for Ellison to stick it to Gates. It makes sense though, as long as Oracle stays significantly better than the open source alternatives.
John
John
Open Source being what it is, I'd say that "one day" is not just likely but inevitable. Someone out there is rich enough or crazy enough to be able to do the work necessary.
Whether it will happen anytime soon is anyone's guess, but if there's demand it will be done.
/Brian
Wow. Never been called a troll before.
Look, to the idiot who modded me down: I'm one of you Open Source Zealots (tm). I simply have enough guts to admit when what I support isn't doing the job. And I still wouldn't be trying to run Linux on a single high-load server.
(I'm also a hardcore Mac junkie, and there's no way in hell I'd be running a database server off a pre-X MacOS either. LinuxPPC? Sure. X? Hell yeah. But there are things the Classic Mac simply doesn't do well (apart from network security).)
/Brian
Hey, stranger things have happened. I've heard tell of a man who was lucky enough to have a Cray for his personal system...
And in any case, if a company needs it and can't get it, they'd hire someone to write it anyway.
/Brian
FIRST POST!!!1!!
Okay, now that I got that out of the way (and I probably won't be when I actually get this posted...)
I think Oracle probably holds the same place in the database world as Sun does in the server world. Open Source is a great thing, but it hasn't quite evolved to the enterprise-level capability that's needed. If I was doing anything involving heavy processing, you'd better believe I'd be running a Linux (or BSD or Darwin) farm to do the work. But if I needed something that was going to handle anything and everything I could throw at it, Solaris would still be my first choice (and you can get source anyway, even if the licensing is ludicrous).
Oracle's future is in positioning themselves as the Solaris of databases; when MySQL and PostgreSQL finally do catch up, they should be preparing themselves to go down the same route as IBM, opening up to the Open Source community while providing a rock-solid support network for their users. If Larry Ellison wants to prove to the world that he's not quite as much of a nutjob as everyone thinks he is, this is the sort of idea that should be on his roadmap.
/Brian
A quick scan of chapter one seems to learn that Oracle itself doesn't do anything Open Source, except supplying Oratcl, a scripting tool.. So it's all about what *other* people do concerning open source and Oracle compared to what Oracle itself is doing in Open source. The last part can be easily answered: not a lot, except the already mentioned Oratcl and porting Oracle 8i to Linux (but not free and open source I presume).
INNER JOIN Holy_Ghost ON Father.Holy_GhostID = Holy_Ghost.ID INNER JOIN Son ON Father.SonID = Son.ID
WHERE Divine_Revelation = True AND Gods_Other_Than_Me = False AND Teaching_Untainted_By_Quick_Buck_Evangelist > 0
Oracle: (0 rows returned)
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Oracle has too many advantages over its competitors to open the source code. If Andy Duncan thinks that MySQL is going to be competitive in a few years, he is smoking some good stuff. Does anyone really thing that one day MySQL is going to support parallel servers on a multi-domain Sun E10k? This guy's only crediability is that he was a contract DBA at Oracle's EMEA data center - he sure is in the know. :)
http://jamesthornton.com/acs/benchmarks-ora817-pg7 03.html
So much for "openness", although if you look hard enough you and draw your own conclusion about the name of a "leading proprietary database application" is you can see PostgreSQL can perform impressively:
http://www.angelfire.com/nv/aldev/pgsql/GreatBridg e.html
And they are known for dirty marketing tricks, where once they lock you in they jack up the price:
http://pub13.ezboard.com/fiwetheydatabases.showMes sage?topicID=76.topic&index=1
I'm not saying MySQL or PostgreSQL won't every be competitive with Oracle. I'm saying that they won't be for a long time yet. Even when they do become competitive it's doubtful whether Oracle would gain anything by opening their code.
This is a nice illustration of what I find so unappealing about the "Free everything!" crowd. There is an utter contempt for the skill, talent, labor and risk that go into creating the goods they want to redistribute. In this case, it's the idea that creating software is simply "blasting bits" onto media. In other contexts, it's a similar attitude towards the creation of music, pharmaceuticals, inventions, brand names, literature... The only professions worthy of respect are sysadmin, Linux advocate or seller of T-shirts and stuffed monkeys. I'm no Libertarian but people like this make me want to beat them over the head with a copy of Atlas Shrugged.
In an entirely unrelated point, notice that the same guy then sings the praises of Oracle for involving itself with free software, while they keep their DB entirely proprietary and shackled with the sort of licensing MS would be roundly denounced for.
Oracle has the same privilige games have on the desktop; they're cut total immunity from Open Source advocacy, probably because they're simply too important to the advocates to forgo. In fact, both Taco and Hemos seem to believe that as long as their their Windows partitions are only used for games, they don't really exist the rest of the time.
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
This is particularly likely if they decide to re-engineer the product's kernel to be more object-oriented. Oracle's attempts at adding object features to its database started at 7.3 with user defined data types, got a huge boost at version 8.0 with user-defined object types, and another kick forward in 8i (8.1) with the internal Java engine. But it's all just grafted onto a relational kernel that hasn't changed significantly since version 7. (The rumor is that Oracle's developers are afraid to touch it for fear of breaking something, so all new features are bolted on using PL/SQL packages.)
So, let's say they rewrite the kernel from the ground up and give it a new name. It becomes the flagship product, and that clears the way for Oracle to release the older source code to whomever wants it. They'd be making most of their money on subscriptions to their online apps anyway.
1) mod up the five slashdotters on the list below.
2) reply to the article (not this post).
3) copy this post into your new post.
4) Remove the top karma whore
5) add a link to your
6) post!
7) Paste the URL of your post into your
Within days you will receive at least 50 karma points.
People to mod up
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