IBM to Oracle - You Can't Buy Open Source

mrops writes "CNET has up a short article about IBM's reaction to Oracle's recent acquisitions. From the article: 'Handy was responding to comments made by Oracle CEO Ellison to the Financial Times, where he said that he wanted Oracle to control a 'full stack' of software, including the Linux operating system. If Oracle did try to buy a Linux distributor, such as Red Hat or Novell, Handy said 'we'd stick to our strategy of having two or more independent distributors and have to wait and see what happens.'" It should be pointed out, as noted in yesterday's Slashback, that Ellison has no intentions of purchasing Red Hat.

Comments

Re:Oracle buys IBM

[Kadin2048]

Not sure if that was a joke, but just in case it wasn't:

Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL)

• Market Cap $73.07 Billion USD,
  
• revenue $13.41 B
  
• gross profit $9.15 B
  
• Employees 49,872

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM)

• Market Cap $128.6 Billion USD,
  
• revenue $91.13 B
  
• gross profit $36.53 B
  
• Employees 341,750

So if either company were to buy the other, it would be IBM acquiring Oracle, but I think Oracle's probably too big for them to swallow in any event.

Oracle is certainly the more profitable company though, in terms of profit/revenue, but then again they don't really manufacture anything, while IBM still makes and sells a lot of stuff.