Slashdot Mirror
Oracle Looks At Buying Novell
Several readers wrote to note Larry Ellison's comments about launching an Oracle Linux Distro (great! yet another!) and that Oracle has/is also looking at purchasing Novell. The great shake-out continues.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of the IT companies don't get Linux and OSS.
Hint to Larry (and IBM, HP, Novell, etc): Work together on a single distribution of Linux if you want to get rid of Microsoft. Commoditize the OS and make your money providing services and software on top of it.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Larry Ellison proudly presents -- Orix!
I for one am not jumping on this bandwagon, because Larry is driving and I don't think he has one hand firmly on the wheel as it is. This is a shotgun marriage and isn't liable to make Oracle any more competitive with Microsoft in the forseeable future. He should have probably done this 5 years ago.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Mysql and postgresql are mysteriously missing from SuSE after the acquisition
http://saveie6.com/
Oracle on NetWare beens out for a while now.
http://www.orafaq.com/faqnetwr.htm
Personally, I think that it would be a bad move for Oracle to attempt to expand into the desktop OS/app market. They don't have the experience at that level.
Work together on a single distribution of Linux if you want to get rid of Microsoft
I don't think their goal is to get rid of Microsoft, per say. When you buy an automobile, you have the choices ranging from sedans to minivans to heavy duty trucks. Does the Ford F350 really "compete" with a Honda Civic? Does a person purchase a vehicle and decide between the two of those? Not for the most part. For the most part, I've seen IT professionals pick the right tool for the job. When I need to deploy a Microsoft solution, it's usually because it's the best fit for the job. When I need to deploy and Linux solution, it's usually because it's the best fit for the job.
IMHO, there are very few instances where and educated IT professional could actually have to compare a MS or OSS solution in the same way a car buyer would compare a Ford F350 and Honda Civic.
Better yet, just imagine how this would have some serious impact on our friends at SCO? They thought they were taking on IBM, and Novell got into the mix, but with an acquistian by Oracle you would have SCO up against IBM and Oracle -- two heavy weights. To really make it painful, Larry Ellision is not known for being a nice business man.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Nononono, it's Oracle Web Novell Enterprise Desktop.
PS. I know and support the argument that the huge number of distros is a benefit of Linux. But an Oracle Distro? I don't buy that...
RedHat and SuSE are the usual "enterprise" distros that have tweaks for running Oracle, but Redhat dominates. wonder how threatened RedHat would be if Oracle bought and pushed SuSE. Oracle has had a problem in the past four years of trying to make integrated features that really were best left to third party, like for example oracle filesystem and oracle clustering, which are shakier and more trouble to admin than 3rd party.
RedHat threatened? How about Sun Microsystems?
Back in the day, Sun's Solaris was the target for Oracle. Every other platform was a port of it, and reportedly not as good. I've only used Oracle on Solaris for big and important DBs.
I've thought for years that Oracle should be an OS because an Oracle box is not going to be doing much else anyway. Oracle has its own filesystem, redundancy, clustering, you name it. Many of Oracle's "big boy" features are blurred between what an application does and what an OS does. Its common that the first thing you do when you install oracle is modify the OS to allow for Oracle to work. Most importantly, its the shared memory parameters of the OS that needs to be modified (or at least used to as of version 10).
Having an Oracle OS seems inevitable. With Linux its more than possible.
Oracle has been going to a lot of trouble to shove Novell's IDM out of shops by pressuring sites to switch to their identity management product lately.
Of course, this could just be "Crazy Larry" trying to get IBM to blow a lot of cash buying Novell to prevent Oracle from controlling the intellectual property at issue in the SCO case.
FTFA: Oracle had considered buying Novell Inc
The way I read it, it means: We looked at buying Novell, but instead will be launching our own Linux distribution.
Oh and they are "considering" their own distro. So to sum the article up: business as usual.
Absolute no decisions are taken and most likely nothing will happen. If this were about Microsoft, the whole article would be called FUD.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
No, Ubuntu is maintained by a non-profit foundation, that gets a lot of funding from a corporation that exists to fund and promote open source software -- not to make money for it's shareholder (not shareholders, since there is only one).
You know, Microsoft's street address also says a lot about their mentality.
I blogged about this today: the next step in the commoditization of operating systems: application and tool vendors include the operating system and every thing in one complete software stack.
This is not as crazy as I might have thought a few years ago because of virtualization tools like Xen (etc.) However, if companies like Oracle start selling the 'whole stack' I hope that they offer versions that are built for Xen.
Would a customized OpenSolaris make more sense?
I'd prefer IBM buy Novell than Oracle. It'd be nice to see IBM be a software company again, and they have the marketing presence to put a real dent in Microsoft's market share. Once that happens not only will Linux become much better supported by both commercial vendors (I'd LOVE to see the Adobe Creative Suite and Ulead's media suites ported to Linux) and hardware manufacturers (maybe ATI cards will stop sucking, and maybe we'll even see accelerated drivers for the AiW line!). Another benefit is that Microsoft will be once again be forced to compete rather than rest on their laurels; we'll see vast improvements in maintenance scriptability (Don't tell me VBS is a solution; it isn't! VBS is a hack which has had major security holes), better customer support, prices more in line with what they should be charging, and they'll be forced to recognize that when customers buy software, they BUY software and actually DO have the right to sell used licenses on eBay when they decide to quit using it. Everybody wins in that case, whether you want to run Linux or Windows.
Oracle? Oracle appears to be a company that buys companies for the same reason Microsoft does: to kill off any potential competition.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I think it more likely that the opposite would be true. It is unlikely that Oracle would focus on the OS as a revenue stream *directly* rather as an enabling technology for the rest of the stack they already sell. Naturally there would be the ability to buy support for th OS itself so that would add some value.
IF everyone ran Windows the world would be so much better. Imagine one central repository where everything could be collected, supported, and distributed.
Now think about what you just said if someone from another vantage point said it. Just because its your favorite distro doesn't mean its right for everyone. Multiple vantage points is what keeps linux and the rest of the computing world competitive.