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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."
Oracle's security record is abyssmal, their products have major usability issues (yes, including their database...god that thing's arcane), and the company itself is arrogant as hell. Please, don't let that beast absorb a sensible distro.
Anyone in the ubuntu community doesn't quite understand what will happen if oracle were to buy out Ubuntu. Ubuntu in my experience is targeted at making it easy for n00bs to use linux. Oracle will definitely NOT be focusing on this area. They'll be focusing on tweaking whatever OS they do use to make oracle easier to use and setup. They don't care about the latest video codec, your new soundcard, or that great new 3D rendered desktop.
The goals of oracle and ubuntu are so far off from each other it troubles me to hear anyone even make the suggestion.
Ubuntu is a cutting edge Linux distro with a cute, fun desktop with great installer/maintenance applications. Ubuntu can install MySQL in a few minutes. Not sure I would trust it for any sort of high- availability application. Debian Stable, RedHat Enterprise, Suse Enterprise & Solaris would be a wiser choice.
Oracle:
Ubuntu:
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
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.
Caution: Contents under pressure
One of the things is a fairly large userbase for Netware.. and a working structure of a company.
So, yes if you are looking for just a linux distro, they are not the thing to aquire, but if you are looking to expand you market share in general.. (like Oracle tries to) Novell does have (atleast potentially) other benefits too.
Mark Shuttleworth has no incentive to sell Canonical/Ubuntu to Oracle. If he were in it for the money, Ubuntu wouldn't mail me CDs once every six months.
Oh, a lesson in history from Mr. I'm my own grandpa.
What about the Ubuntu community makes anyone think they would want to be locked into making Oracle applications run better?
What about Oracle and Larry makes anyone think they would want to answer to Ubuntu community every time they want a change to make an Oracle application run better?
Far be it from me to question the wisdom of Richard Monson-Haefel, but I assume people at Oracle are capable of grasping the difference between adding a Linux distribution and buying a company the size of Novell.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Oracle plays in a different niche than Ubuntu. Oracle should buy RH or Novell if they want to reach enterprise users.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
Oracle is not looking to buy a linux. They are looking to buy a channel. If they were looking for a distro, they would simply roll their own. Getting into businesses is the hard part esp. with companies such as MS blocking their way (illegally, but overlooked these days) and IBM (not illegal, but DB is a real database).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ubuntu also boasts one of the largest community bases of all the Linux distributions, called the Ubuntu Forums, which contain more than 67,000 unique registered users.
Hmm...the Gentoo forums have over 111,000 unique registered users.
As if unique forum name count was a meaningful metric of anything.
*sigh* back to work...
The other thing to realize is that now that SUSE was bought by Novell it "corporate". Ubuntu is not. Once something because a corporate item it is perfectly acceptable for other corporations to buy it. But even if the product is very similiar and is not corporate; they will shy away.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
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.
Now that you failed to buy MySQL, try debian - it's easier.
Yeah. If Oracle tried to take Ubuntu, the very next day you'd see news about a fork. The goals of Oracle are simply too different from the developers of Ubuntu for any simbiotic relationship to develop. Oracle wants a stable, no frills server for a massively scaleable database. Ubunto aims for the desktop crowd.
Why not Ubuntu? Zealot attitudes destroy trust.
Earlier today someone flamed a Linux release for the self-
righteous feeling it gave him. Such a person must NEVER
be given any real responsibility.
(By the way, I *do* use Ubuntu and I do *not* use Oracle.)
dortmann31415@yahoo.com
It's not about the distro. If it were they'd take a small team and customize their own disto. Novell offers services and software (much more than just an OS) to a wide range of governments and mid-sized companies. Oracle has owned the really big business market for a long time. They have a much harder time getting mid-sized and smaller customers. That's where Novell fits in today.
A Novell purchase would be about much more than a distro. It's a corporation with long-term contracts and consultants. Which distro they choose is almost insignificant in comparison.
Developers: We can use your help.
you work a lot with databases don't you ?
... you hardly ever need a gui on ... but with oracle it's never
well i work with various opensource rdbms implementations here every day,
90% of the time only on cli since anything else would be just overhead.
but then again, most of the time i work on rather small projects.
but sometimes when you've got an oracle db with over 100 tables and uncountable
amount of foreign keys, triggers, store procedures, the cli just doesn't cut
it anymore. you need visualization just to understand the 25 things that you're
about to break with that next line.
i've worked with database schemes that are too large to fit on an A2 paper,
there's no way that you can get an overview of it's current state in cli.
you may think that oracle will just ship out it's db on nongui stations with
remote access, so anyone that needs a gui will use some kind of remote management
tool and everybody would be happy ? this aint going to happen, this would just
cramp oracle's style. they gui everything, gui is what also sells the product.
and oracle certainly would also like to charge money for the linux boxes around
the server box for running their gui tools on them...
so no-gui is not an answer, at least not for oracle.
it may be an answer to mysql and posgresql
a raw gentoo server which just runs your db backend
as simple as that (ffs. you'd need the gui just to run their java based installer).
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
Full disclosure: I own a small number of NOVL and RHAT shares.
Compared to Novell, I think it would be more practical for Oracle to acquire Ubuntu or Mandriva. If I owned ORCL I would rather see them get into Linux by purchasing a Linux-only company.
NOVL has alot of legacy stuff that is of no value to ORCL (although it throws off enough revenue to give them some breathing room while they figure out how to operate as an open source company). RHAT has been relatively successful in monetizing Linux, but the share price includes alot of future expectations. I own both of these and would benefit nicely if ORCL buys either one. But I doubt they will.
Canonical Ltd. looks like they are privately held and might be a relatively easy buy. On the other hand, they seem quite serious about keeping Ubuntu "free as in beer". Mandriva is more of a conventional company. They are publicly traded, and they sell nothing other than Linux and related services. Although they try to avoid giving away the product, Mandriva never crossed the dreaded "Caldera line". As a result, they have a viable product (a Red Hat derivative that could use some work) and their name is unblemished.
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.
Just hire some people and make your own software? Is this too hard?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
>>> you work a lot with databases don't you ?
Ah, unfortunately, I do with Oracle. 5TB worth, and the table listing takes forever to load (in thousands).
We use PLSQL Developer, toad, ERWIN, Informatica, pl/sql...
I'll agree with you that Oracle is a bear.
It's a little like an aircraft carrier. All bow before it, but you need 6,000 crew and 30 support vessels to be fully operational. But then you can project power all over the world and piss off third world nations.
There are how many AC in active duty worldwide? 10, 15 top?
I'm rambling. I'll stop now.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Ubuntu is based on Debian. SuSE is based on, well, SuSE.
Oracle can't own Debian. It think that pretty much covers it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Putting together a distro isn't that hard. Supporting it the way Novell and Red Hat do is hard. That's what Oracle would need to do.
The semi-funny parent post goes along on the trouble of installing Oracle as compared to MySQL and/or Postgres. My experience is that any DB Server requires solid knowledge of it's workings in order to do a clean install. Postgres from scratch is just as painfull as any other. And just because you can apt-get install mysql doesn't mean it's usually easy to install.
My question: Isn't it the big problem with various DB engines that they are more or less very simular but all still have the anoyances we all associate with DBs since 25 years ago? (I'm asking the experts here, folks, not some wannabees) Are there any truly essential differences between, let's say, MySQL 5 and the current Oracle release?
They both use some SQL variant, they both are a fuss to get up and running and they both provide some kind of sort-of-usable bridge between the real world and true object-relational dreamland. Isn't that so? Correct me if I'm wrong. And before you go on about service and all that, detail on what Oracle has to offer that MySQL AB can't provide for equal or less costs. Thanks for any usefull reply.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Why Unbuntu?
Because they can't be recognized as an Enterprise Capable product with a company to back them up with resources, SLA's, and contractual gaurantees. That's why.
This is kind of a dumb question. Sure, Oracle could run on Debian or anything else, but none of these products are making any significant inroads into the corporate american businesses who would purchase Oracle in the first place. It would make as much sense as buying out Amiga.
Larry Ellison's Oracle - "In-humanity to others"
I'm still pretty new to the linux scene, but I don't understand why Oracle would even think of BUYING a linux distro. I'm sure there's more to it, but the only difference I have seen between Slackware, Debian, RedHat, and DSL (just the ones i'd tried) is 1) their standard apps 2) how conf files are stored/handled and 3)their package management. If Oracles only goal is to create a custom OS centered around their DB, they might as well head over to linuxfromscratch.org and build their own custom distro. otherwise, how is it truly going to be a custom OS? It will just be a distro with Oracle included.
Shhhhhhh you're going to lose your street cred with the linux elite. User friendliness is for the weak, didn't you know?
;)
Just change the theme to "simple", get rid of the boot splash and other Ubuntu artwork, and tell everyone you're running Debian unstable. Then you can still hang out with the cool people
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
Honestly, could it be anything else? Oracle + Ubuntu = ridiculous, for reasons already elaborated on by other posters, not the least of which is that Ubuntu is targeted at the DESKTOP. For that matter, FreeBSD would make more sense for Oracle than Ubuntu.
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