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Oracle Embraces Mozilla
kiggs writes "According to this article from eWeek, Oracle Corp. is ready to extend its 'Linux Everywhere' campaign to client systems. At next week's LinuxWorld in New York, Oracle will announce that it will enable the Mozilla open-source Web browser to run Oracle applications in the coming year.
Dave Dargo, vice president of Oracle's Linux Program Office and the Performance Engineering team within its Platform Technologies Division, says that Oracle will look to expand its 1.5-year-old Linux support program by supporting Linux not just as a server but as a client."
It should have had worked since beginning (unless there's some catastrophic bug in mozilla). A web page that requires some specific browser is hopelessly broken by my definition.
Shouldn't supporting Mozilla be obvious? Web applications should adhere to standards, if they don't, well, they are crappy web applications in the first place. I don't consider this "generous", rather than just fixing their broken applications to work like they should have worked in the first place.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
THat's nice to here.
Oracle is not only making sure that you can run MS-free software in the database and servers room, you can also run MS-free software in the DESKTOP!
It is propriatory software, given, but it's not a perfect world and definately a step in the right directions.
Linux is accepted componate of most server rooms out their nowadays. It's nice to see companies like oracle and novell to begin to extend their support out into the desktop and end-user world.
From the Article:
It is widely believed that another primary motivation behind Oracle's embrace of Linux is to push archrival Microsoft Corp. out of its position of power. In pursuit of that goal, Oracle will enable its customers to opt for Mozilla over Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, just as they have enabled customers to opt out of Microsoft operating systems in favor of Linux.
So they're backing free software, something laughed at by most corporate bodies up until this time, to beat Bill. Capitalists using communists to fight fascists. Neat!
Oracle is the MS of the database world. Clueless managers insist on using it because they're the biggest DB company, and us geeks are the ones who have to live with the consequences.
Case in point, my company's got to use Oracle 9i/9iAS for a project, and we must have spent weeks just getting the thing to install properly. We upgraded our developers machines to XP last week, and it won't even install on clean machines.
Don't get me started on their idea of supporting open standards. JAZN (their implementation of JAAS) anyone?
When you want to do some clever stuff, you do not want to restrict yourself to HTML so you do not necessaraly want to use *any* browser. With the Mozilla technology they have a platform that has implementations on many platforms.
So I think they get it and it is less browser technology than presentation technology that they find in Mozilla
A database is a database, which should have nothing to do with user interaction. A web browser is at the presentation level, which is all about user interaction and should have nothing to do with the database.
If Oracle has been writing software that entangles database code with the presentation level, then they are mixing layers and producing appallingly unmaintainable code, and should stop doing that no later than immediately. On the other hand, if they are writing code that produces HTTP/HTML content in the presentation layer, then it doesn't matter which web browser is used to view it.
So why would anyone write software that is specifically "for Mozilla", especially a database vendor? They should just adhere to the HTTP/HTML standards in the presentation layer, so that anyone using a standards-compliant browser can view their content.
Of course, we are talking about Oracle, who has produced PL/SQL packages for generating HTML right out of the database, insist on using their own, outdated JRE's, and perhaps have generated M$-dependent web content. So maybe Oracle is just trying to tell us that they will start doing a couple of things a little bit less stupidly.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
It works on many other operating systems too, including the proprietary Windows. But it is still a success for Linux and open source in general, because any technology that does not allow Microsoft to lock in its customers is a win for freedom, and a loss for Microsoft. Microsoft values one thing more than money, that is the guarantee of making more money (marketshare strangehold). So as Linux and other open source operating systems gains widespread acceptance not just in the server space but with clients too, Microsoft loses out. Microsoft isn't left out or locked out, it is just forced to play on an level playing field.
So victory for open source is not the complete desctruction of the towers of Barad-dur in Redmond, but the creation of a fair and competitive server and desktop market and the neutralization of Microsoft's monopoly power. Once we have that, we have already won. Marketshare numbers will be meaningless, since you are not forced to adopt the platform with the highest market share to get the software solutions that you need.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
all the gloom and doom about what would happen to the "orphaned" Mozilla browser now that AOL was dropping it.
I think there's something wrong with your arguement. Just because KDE "won the desktop war" doesn't mean people should use its default browser. That's EXACTLY like saying Microsoft is winning the os war thus you should use Internet Explorer.
Mozilla is a fine, cross-platform browser which fits Oracle's needs. Right now, cross-platform applications are going to be necessary to introduce to Windows users so that when they are ready to switch, their anxieties can be alleaved by pointing out the same applications are available over here.
We'll have to wait and see what happens. Right now, I would wager to say that they are evil, but useful. Unfortunately, I think that's how they see Linux as well.
But no. It looks like they're just adhering to web standards for their vertical app. Which I appreciate, don't get me wrong, but they might as well have been saying they were embracing Opera.
Good, though I would rather hear they're modifying Oracle to work properly under Mozilla than that they're modifying Mozilla to work properly with Oracle.
Oracle is the MS of the database world. Clueless managers insist on using it because they're the biggest DB company, and us geeks are the ones who have to live with the consequences.
Although I don't like the company and it's hideous culture, I actually rather like the Oracle RDBMS It's powerful, feature-ful, and possible to tune to a fare-thee-well. It is very easy to screw up if you don't know what you're doing, so start easily. Installing on Windows is a snap; Unix installers have always been crap; I guess they figure Unix folks don't need as much handholding. I don't know why you had problems with XP, I've never had a problem.
You really can't compare MS and Oracle from an engineering standpoint. MS is about making getting into the product easy and regretting it later. Oracle is rougher on the novice but solves a lot of tough problems (at a price) that come up in large, bet the company kind of projects. Oracle is not a "hey kids lets put on a show" kind of product, which is not to denigrate systems like MySQL which are better suited for projects in that kind of niche and remarkably flexible given that kind of easy startup. If you need a database to handle the hit counter in your personal web page, Oracle's not for you. In Oracle's niche a few weeks of startup time hardly matter at all, given downstream failover capabilities, scalability, availability, and tunability. Generally speaking Oracle's forte is the kinds of projects where you hire a lead DBA with a decade or more of serious DBA experience, and happily pay the kind of salary that commands. Unfortunately, Oracle doesn't give a shit about newbies, which may not be wise in the long run given MS's focus on making things feel nice and cozy for them. Everyone starts out as a newbie, and MS knows the long term value of newbie mindshare.
One way that Oracle is like MS is that they want to completely own the database market the way MS wants to completely own the OS market. This is hardly surprising, since they want to make lots money. However, monoculture in database management systems would be even worse than in operating system. There is a huge universe of database applications out there, and a variety of products fit well into various spaces. There are even places for products a database professional would consider toys: FileMaker and yes, MS Access.
Grossly simplifying the picture, you can picture a scale with personal databases in the MS Access space on the left, massive enterprise-wide and megadatabses on the right, and workgroup, special purpose databases with varying degrees of transaction and record volume falling various points in the middle. Filemaker and Access are single points on the far left. MySQL, Postgres, FireBird, and similar databases extend from the far left to left of center. Oracle is useful from the middle of the scale to the far right.
It's a gross simplification, of course, because there isn't a single dimension along which you can measure a database project's scale, but several: record volume, update volme, query volume, query complexity, availability requirements, schema complexity etc. But dial up each of these dimensions to the max, and Oracle's probably a no-brainer. Keep the dials all near the minimum, and Oracle's a waste. Twist them into various patterns, and you really have to know your database products to decide whether Oracle is the best choice.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Microsoft has nothing to do with motivating open source.
This is like saying we should be glad about 9/11 as it led to better airline security. Sheesh.
Yes, it is integrated into the OS, but 'integrated' is not really the right word. They started moving APIs around for the DOJ trial - just migrated the stuff for no other reason than to support their BS arguments that IE was 'integrated'. And IE has had a 'Preload' key in the Registry which means your boot will take longer, but then IE will appear to be faster than Moz.
And you trust WU to not sabotaqe your computer?
Actually I disagree with that.
A company that has 'made it big' is far more likely to be completely untrustworthy than one which is quietly pottering away in their corner of the globe. At the big end of town, you either play dirty, or get replaced by someone else who does.
I would put my support behind Oracle simply to weeken Microsoft's position, and rely on the GPL to protect us from their acquisitional tendancies.