Slashdot Mirror
Oracle's Infrastructure Now Fully Linux-ized
mbadolato writes "An article over at InformationWeek reports
Oracle is aggressively adopting Linux both internally and for its products, despite SCO Group's threats earlier this week that it may sue those who don't pay licensing fees to the company. Chuck Rozwat, an Oracle executive VP, says the company has moved its IT infrastructure to Linux, a year after CEO Larry Ellis issued the mandate. In the coming year, Oracle will move its base development platform to Linux, including putting the open-source operating system on the workstations of 8,000 developers"
...and they still can't make an sqlplus client that supports readline.
Yes, I'm trolling. You would too, if you had to deal with Oracle on a daily basis---contractual obligations, you see. (Where's my MySQL when you need it?)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Oracle will move its base development platform to Linux, including putting the open-source operating system on the workstations of 8,000 developers"
.DOC .XLS and .PPT - and not tied to Windows per se, this is what will cause the widespread adoption of a truely open business document file format.
Maybe this will answer the question "Is Linux ready for the desktop?" for other major corporations. Yes, a developer workstation is a "desktop" if it's their main business machine.
A heavyweight desktop-linux push is what is going to get businesses off the proprietary MS office file formats. When people realize that they are tied to
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
actually no, read the article it says "..a year after...", back one year there was no big fuss over all these licensing fees issues
but you can bet that sco will get brutally ass-raped if they even try to touch mr ellison's jewels. he's got a big enough ego to go mad about it, and the cash to sue sco into oblivion
Not as big as you'd think (at least not for the developers). The base platform for Oracle (AFIK) is Solaris. The differences between Solaris and Linux aren't that nasty -- besides they already have to be linux-awere in their development tasks, anyways. It'll be a bit more work for the admins who'll need to learn which linux system tools replace the Sun-specific ones, but even that's not a lot, and there are probably fewer admins at Oracle than developers.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I am sure they got one of the 1500 letters sent out. Them and nVidia are two very big linux shops in the CA Bay Area. nVidia in particular has video of their data centre touting how many 1000's of SMP machines they have.
I am sure SCO hears the dinner bell. Too bad all they are going to eat is the ashes of their stock certificates.
Definitely time for non-Microsoft bigcorps like Oracle to put their money where their mouths are. Seems ironic that companies like Oracle, with thousands of desktops, would continue putting money directly into Microsoft's coffers by buying Windows and Office -- money that will be used to finance Microsoft's attempted destruction of both Linux and competitors like Oracle.
... that alone could add up to hundreds of thousands of seats. That's a lot of revenue Microsoft wouldn't be able to collect.
If every company that Microsoft directly competed with (Oracle, AOL, Sony, Nintendo, IBM, Palm, RealNetworks, Novell, just to name a few) were to boycott Microsoft products for their internal use (still keeping, of course, whatever they need to do development of products which run on or with Windows)
Once the Oracle IT folks finish switching developer desktops over to Linux, they should then begin switching over their administrative staff as well. If Sun can run a multi thousand seat corporate network on *ix, so can any large company. If all Microsoft competitors followed suit, it would create enough momentum to jump-start mainstream adoption of the Linux desktop that much sooner.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Undeniably, a large loss for Sun, too. But this migration fails to demonstrate what many want: that a non-technical workforce can move from Windows to Linux. You have neither a non-technical workforce, nor a workforce that is trained and comfortable with Windows.
Wake me when Geico moves their entire org, including sales agents, to Linux. Until then, while these moves are good, it only demonstrates the preference of engineer types, not marketing types. Unfortunately, there are a lot more marketing types than engineer types in the world.
--
$tar -xvf
Dude-
Don't make the assumption that everybody at Oracle is a code writer... there are LOTS, and I mean LOTS, of non-technical people working there. Just because it's a software company doesn't mean that every, or even most, employees are technical. And, most of them were initially running Windows.
Hell, Larry himself will be running Linux instead of Windows, as that's no different than all the marketing people, product managers, doc writers, etc., that are not "technical".
That's about as much of a non-technical workforce as you can get in modern business, even though they may have technical components.
It's not like the coders are going to drop everything and teach people how it all works.
$0.02 (CDN)
Comparing MySQL to Oracle is like comparing a leaking dinghy to the Queen Elizabeth II. MySQL may be used by a lot of companies, but it's still a joke compared to even other open source SQL databases like PostgreSQL. Not to mention it seems like they're always having licensing issues(to the extent that MySQL support has been pulled from the PHP 5.0 development branch).
You want a serious, professional, stable database? Oracle, DB2, Sybase, etc. No money? Try PostgreSQL. MySQL substitutes some crazy locking in place of real transaction support. PostgreSQL not only doesn't need to lock tables for most operations, but it also supports very sophisticated locking. Oh, and did I mention PostgreSQL is object-oriented? The only two thing PostgreSQL is lacking is good replication support in the main release(it's still in development, I believe). That and full text searching is kinda funky(although very sophisticated).
I've seen so many "performance problems" that were due almost entirely to lack of proper database functionality in MySQL.
I can hear the scriptkiddies(PHP scriptkiddies) now chanting "it's lighter weight, it's faster". Guess what? You can make PostgreSQL just as fast if you turn off various sanity checks(these checks are better than what MySQL does) AND the more complete implementation of SQL actually lets you do more powerful(or perhaps efficient) queries. Who finishes a house first, the guy with a hammer and saw, or the guy with a truck full of tools?
Please help metamoderate.
Of course Microsoft doesn't like open source solutions. Open source solutions are already, and are increasingly so, in direct competition with the products that make up their revenue stream.
Not all of these companies that are jumping on the open source bandwagon are going to be understanding and cooperative when open source comes knocking on their door: their revenue stream.
In fact, I'd venture to guess that the majority of them will be anything but understanding and cooperative. These companies are not adopting open source solutions because they want to advance the common good. They are not doing this out of community spirit. These companies are jumping on the open source bandwagon because they see it as a good economic decision; this is the bottom line.
When their bottom line is threatened, they will turn around, lash out, and bite the hand that feeds them.
They may not succeed, but they will try, and I for one know that I do not want to be the developer contributing to software that infringes whatever wealth of patents they are holding when that time comes.
I do not trust our new corporate bed-fellows.
I do not trust our legal system to protect me from them.
I do not trust our policy makers to even care about protecting me from them.
Oh that I could. Fortunately, or unfortunately, people like me just don't matter in this country of ours.
Well, if nothing else, at least our votes can help the existing power structure project the illusion that we ever had a real, actualizable opportunity to have our interests represented.
And that should be good enough for me, right?
Right?
?
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
Sure, it's easy for companies to see open source as a platform or environment for their products, but what happens when open source starts to move into their territory?
They either freak out and commit SCOicide, or they try and find more territory.
So far Oracle seems to have been doing the latter. It's not as if there aren't any open source databases, it's just that people trust Oracle to provide features and performance beyond what the alternatives currently deliver. If the alternatives catch up, then Oracle will have to produce something else to make their products more valuable.
And really, is there anything wrong with that? It isn't exactly common economic practice to make a product once and then expect to sell the same product over and over again until the end of time. The Econ 101 rule that price tends toward marginal cost is oversimplified, but it's not that far off, and with software your marginal cost is zero. Even if you never had price warring competitors or open source alternatives to worry about, eventually you run out of customers, who don't need to purchase your product twice because it never wears out.
IMHO, there is one flaw in your analysis. Customer perception is very important so if Oracle expect the SCO law suit to hang around and get news coverage for a few years they sure as hell would not bet their money on linux.
Why is it that SCO show 80 lines of linux kernel source code that are identical to SCO Unix source code and keep claiming that there are hundreds of identical files. Files - not lines.
Monday: Red Hat sues SCO.
Thursday: IBM sues SCO.
Friday: Oracle announces commitment to Linux.
This is a good way to do PR: a rolling wave from different sources.
Objectively, it's the same total amount of commitment to Linux whether everybody does it in one day or they do it three weeks apart. But this timing feeds the news cycle better.
I'm hoping that Google will issue a press release soon. And then a behemoth retailer, like Home Depot. And then a brokerage firm, like Merrill Lynch.
I'm working at the company in question (as another poster liked to put it). You think Larry thought this up last weekend and decided to make the new public? Guy, this has been in plans (and implementation, mind you) well before SCO came up with their "All Your Base." Big decisions like these aren't made in a day, and just because of what SCO is doing, a company like Oracle doesn't backoff.
There are lots of stories about how company XYZ is using Linux. However, this one has potential for a *real* benefit to Linux. Why?
Well, when Oracle, with cash flowing out of it's orifices, finds something in Linux that they'd really like to have improved, they have plenty of resources to improve it, which benefits Linux.
If some small, third-world government adopts Linux, that's great. But they're still not going to give anywhere near as much back to Linux as companies like IBM have been able to. Oracle stands a pretty good chance of giving quite a bit back as well, and I think Linux will be much better off for it.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Oracle's products are the mainstay of the database industry and moving to Linux shows that Microsoft does not in fact have a monopoly.
Only in the context of database servers. Microsoft does have a monopoly on the desktop regarding office productivity software and gaming. Only recently, have Linux, the BSDs, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, etc. begun to get enough mind-share such that Microsoft's desktop monopoly is jepardized. Note that Microsoft's monopoly is so entrenched that only FREE products could compete.
It is annoying when people look at the whole software industry as one market, when it is really thousands upon thousands of markets. Each category of software application (operating system, database, word processor, strategy game, action game, calendars, etc.) is a whole market distinct from all others.
Look at the automotive industry, for example. Sure, there is a market for whole cars, but each car is made up of thousands of components. If you look around, there are distinct markets for each component. Want a snazzier tachometer? There are several companies eager and willing to sell you one. Note that even the market for whole cars can be broken down into heavy-duty trucks, light-duty trucks, vans, family sedans, sports cars, wannabe sports cars, compacts, etc.
There is nothing special about software that frees it from traditional and long-worn concepts in the business world. Of course, there will always be the issues of "is it art" vs. "is it a truck", but those are mostly due to the diversity and immaturity of the software industry.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin