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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.
This is important. They want the installed base and the community. Oracle certainly has the resources to make a new distro from scratch if they wanted, but it takes time to build up a loyal following and by extension an installed base. Certainly a lot of people would try a brand-new Oracle distro, but who knows how many would stick with it if their favorite package(s) was/were not available? Larry likes control, so basing a new one off someone else's distro is right out.
When Ellison says "We're not interested in RedHat / Novell right now," he means RIGHT NOW. Share prices rise on acquisition news and fall when those acquisitions fail to materialize. If he says "We're not buying RedHat," then the recent gains RedHat has seen because of the oracle takeover talk will probably go away (AFAIK there are no other suitors.)
Well, for one thing the GPL would make that difficult, but if the existing license is like the BSD license than I suppose it could happen. A little like what apple did, yes?
sahuaro
Phoenix Linux Users Group
Penguins in the desert
Both Oracle and IBM have got it wrong. If you've ever tried to install:
- DB2
- Oracle
- WebSphere
on a RedHat or SuSE , the first thing you notice is...both Oracle and IBM tried to make the installation easy by putting a shitty JAVA GUI on the thing. Two problems with this: it forces you to have to install JAVA and X windows eithier on your server (in the DMZ? I don't THINK so!) or to have to install just the X windows client bits on your sever along with Java...and then bring in a laptop that you attach to your server on a temporary network while the network is offline, yada yada yada....WHY NOT JUST WRITE A FRICKIN' RPM???? HUH? LIKE, ALONG WITH A PROPER DAEMON SCRIPT SO YOU CAN START AND STOP ORACLE, DB2, WebSphere, Etc Etc Etc in a single command-line, in the STANDARD LINUX WAY???? D'ya THINK????? DUH!
A couple of people have tried to write an open-source RPM/daemon script suite around these packages, but of course -- then a new version of the proprietary DB/web service comes out.
And both Oracle and IBM are rolling in dough, why would anyone do this for them for free?
If a sysadmin got the freedom to run Open Source anything, they'll switch to PhP/MySQL and/or PostGreSQL (depending on whether they need triggers or not) soon enough ANYWAY
Oracle could drastically increase its install base in the Linux community just by demonstrating some rudimentary competence in the area of standard Linux server systems software management.
On the other hand, an owner like Oracle could kill a loyal following. Especially if they lost the focus that Novell has in making a solid enterprise desktop (as well as all the other little projects Novell has going). Why would Oracle care about any of that stuff? I know I would stop using a distro if Oracle bought it.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
SSH was under a freer license than GPL, but did use a GPL library. Today OpenSSH (a derivative of SSH) contains no GPL code. Have a look at the OpenSSH history