Hey Oracle, Why Not Ubuntu?

OSS_ilation writes "While much has been said about Novell or Red Hat as potential targets for Oracle this week, there are some in the Linux community who believe a different distro might deserve the attention of Larry Ellison. That distribution is Ubuntu, and analysts like Burton Group's Richard Monson-Haefel believed that it would be a better fit for Oracle, which is looking only for an OS and not for any of the baggage associated with Novell, like Netware. Ubuntu, with its huge community base and version 6.06 on the way, could be the perfect fit, he said."

Comments

It's the Apps, not the O/S

[OYAHHH]

Richard Monson-Haefel,

Says "Oracle, which is looking only for an OS".

Well he is wrong. Oracle is pretty much O/S neutral. And they have good reasons for being so. I'll let you figure that one out on your own.

If all Oracle wanted was a Linux O/S distribution then what would stop them from simply going to a particular distribution's website and downloading it?

What is really happening is that one of their major Linux partners, Redhat, has been moving into the applications business recently. So much so that they have begun to compete with Oracle on quite a few fronts.

Thus, Oracle is looking at the situation and saying what money making venture, not charitable situation, is the best fit in a changing competitive landscape. Apparently the answer is Novell, i.e., fits better than any other, it's more mature, etc.

Why not Ubuntu

[Elektroschock]

When we speak of Novell we mean SuSe Linux. Suse is a KDE centric distribution which has a respectable market share on Linux desktops in Europe. Currently some Novell desktop strategist try to achieve the same with Gnome centric solutions, with limited success.

(K)Ubuntu has no market as the product is not sold.

Companies can justify to buy another company and lose a lot of money for the strategic advantage. They cannot justify to donate large portions of money, even when the effect would be the same.

The other issue is control. When Oracle buys Novell they can control corporate policy but they will have no say over Ubuntu. And I do not believe they will buy canonical.

As Oracle I would rather buy Mandriva.

Duh...

[big.ears]

Ellison's announcement was not about acquiring Novell--it was an announcement meant to punish Red Hat for acquiring JBoss out from under Oracle's nose. If Ellison can't have JBoss, he's threatening to compete directly against the firm that has it. The stock market has taken back all the gains RHAT had since they announced the JBoss deal; down 5-6% yesterday. So forget about Ubuntu, this is just PR.

Re:Only one problem

[Philodoxx]

I disagree, there are plenty of ways to build up a successful distro without going to the lengths that Ubuntu has to build up its community. If Shuttleworth wanted to make a distro, but wanted to do it frugally he wouldn't host the ISOs on Ubuntu's servers, and he most certainly wouldn't get discs factory pressed and shipped to anybody anywhere in the world.

Ultimately I have no idea what Mr. Shuttleworth's plans are, but I get the impression that he's made his millions and is content with what he has. I'm sure that if the opportunity presented itself to make Ubuntu profitable he would take it, but flat out selling the company to Oracle would be a very abrupt turn around from his post Ubuntu behaviour.