Why Oracle Isn't Part of the OSDL

darthcamaro writes "Some may wonder why OSDL, the self-proclaimed center of gravity for the Linux Universe and employer of Linus Torvalds, does not include Oracle as a member. Well, in a recent interview Wim Coekaerts, Director of Linux Engineering at Oracle has spelled it out in no uncertain terms. From the article: 'The thing that was really kind of revolting is that OSDL goes out and basically says that they represent the Linux community while there is no direct feedback line back to the community.'"

Comments

Not only Oracle

[Bromskloss]

I also wonder, why isn't Apple or Microsoft in?

Re:Not only Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of questions, yes. To me the big one is: Why goverments are not in?
    Is it because they don't want people to be free?
    Is it because they are afraid of what unleashed sw can achive?
    Is it because it is not good for the next country presidentials?
    Is it because they think they will not get big bucks?
    Is it because they are plain stupids?

And another big question: Why do we allow this to happen? How long?

Re:Not only Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the membership agreements carefully. It is possible to be an OSDL member without public announcement or listing on the site. I suppose one could _ask_, but I doubt OSDL's obliged to respond - that's up to the individual company.

Re:Not only Oracle

[jkrise]

I also wonder, why isn't Apple or Microsoft in?

Hey, not even the great Stallman is part of the OSDL. So, that would mean he's in the same bracket?

Re:Not only Oracle

[Macthorpe]

Is it because they are plain stupids?

As far as I'm concerned, this is Slashdot quote of the day.

Re:Not only Oracle

[gimple]

Is it because they are plain stupids?

As far as I'm concerned, this is Slashdot quote of the day.

Seldom is the question asked: Is it because they are plain stupids?

Re:Not only Oracle

[Millenniumman]

Perhaps it's because governments aren't software developers?

Re:Not only Oracle

[jbrader]

And thus was yet another meme born.

Re:Not only Oracle

[siriuskase]

Is it because they are plain stupids?

Don't they know that I and most /. type people prefer our stupids fancy and complicated?

Re:Not only Oracle

[evil_Tak]

Hey, not even the great Stallman is part of the OSDL.

Of course he's not. He would be if it was the FSDL...

Re:Not only Oracle

[frank_adrian314159]

Seldom is the question asked: Is it because they are plain stupids?

I believe that a more effective grammatical phrasing would be: Is it because they is plain stupids?

Re:Article summarized in five words:

[kie]

or six words :)

Re:Article summarized in five words:

[arivanov]

Why are you insulting the innocent amphibians?

It should be "Because we are Larry Ellison clones".

Oracle's OSDL membership

[vchoy]

No need to join because:

Oracle Still Diggs Linux

Re:Oracle's OSDL membership

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that "digg" isn't a real word, right? :)

Re:Oracle's OSDL membership

[packeteer]

At one point in time "isn't" was not a real word either but it was introduced into english after many people started using it. English is not a dead language, go to France is your want your language to never change (you still wont find what your looking for there but you will be with like minded people).

Re:Oracle's OSDL membership

[BiggyP]

But "isn't" isn't really a word in its own right, it's a contraction of "is not"

Re:Oracle's OSDL membership

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically, isn't is a contraction of two words.

Re:Oracle's OSDL membership

[scotch]

Why do you hate the French so much? What have they done to you lately?

Re:Oracle's OSDL membership

[HardCase]

One word: Renault. Actually, for me, Renault is a marvelous synonym for a lot of words, most of which aren't fit for mixed company. See also, Fuego. And if you really want to blister the paint, Turbo Fuego.

-h-

Re:Oracle's OSDL membership

[drinkypoo]

But "isn't" isn't really a word in its own right, it's a contraction of "is not"

Contractions are words. What else would they be? They're not trains or beach balls, you know. And by the way, the vast majority of words are made up of other words, sometimes in some other language - like latin or greek, especially in the case of english.

Re:Oracle's OSDL membership

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't it?

Re:Oracle's OSDL membership

[Anonymous Coward]

As is you're which is the word he was looking for in his last sentence.

Re:Oracle's OSDL membership

[BiggyP]

The vast majority of words are made up from other words, and from Latin words especially, but these words have their own meanings and definitions, often distinct from those of their parents. Contractions, on the other hand, are just that, a shortened single word form of a common pairing of words, they are separated purposefully by apostrophe, to indicate that parts of the original words have been omitted, and are simply the sum of their parts. I'm not saying that contractions aren't words at all, just that they have no identity of their own, unlike asbo and chavtastic, the kind of words now gracing the dictionaries of our ever expanding and evolving language.

Answer: MySQL

[ABeowulfCluster]

They're in competition with MySQL.

Re:Answer: MySQL

[utnapistim]

They're in competition with MySQL.

I don't think they are actually, not at the level that Oracle really cares about.

In the past five years I've worked for two corporations, and the software we developed was targetted at Oracle, MsSQL and Sybase (more or less in that order). The software was for other large corporations in the telecom and finance industries and most enhancements/bugs/so on were coming on the Oracle side.

Business entities at that level pay lots of money for (Oracle) software and I'm not sure they even look at MySql as a viable alternative.

Maybe that's just the ones I've come in contact with, though...

Re:Answer: MySQL

[Fred_A]

And Berkelet DB too ! Oh and grep ! Don't forget grep ! Amazing what you can do with grep, cut, sort and a couple lines of bash.

Who needs Oracle really. Bunch of crooks, that's what they are.

Re:Answer: MySQL

[morcego]

sed and awk! Who needs grep and cut anyway ?

Re:Answer: MySQL

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL is to Oracle what a dragonfly is to the windshield of $80 billion truck.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=ORCL ... why not OSDL? Why OSDL? Show Me The Money.

Re:Answer: MySQL

[Cobralisk]

Linux was in the same boat 10 years ago. Personal Computers were there 25 years ago. IBM was of the opinion that serious businesses use serious computers and stayed focused on mainframes until they all but lost the PC market to smaller competitors (like Apple). Disruptive technology has a weird way of pulling the market out from under your feet and turning your assumptions around. Don't underestimate your potential competitors.

Re:Answer: MySQL

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

sed and awk! Who needs grep and cut anyway ?

I asked someone who used those tools. He sed it's rather awkward to build an RDBMS.

Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[RLiegh]

I mean, mysql may not be a serious professional solution; but you can't beat the price! Have you looked at what oracle costs these days? That's a little too steep for my web sight, I'll tell you what.

At the end of the day, both will get 'er done, and that's what's important.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[morie]

Depends on how much money you lose if your web site is down becuase of lack af a serious professional solution, as you call it.

I think money is not the main issue here.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[moochfish]

Yeah, with that mentality, I'm sure my post will show up in a day or two, eh buddy? =)

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[killjoe]

The big three database manufacturers all charge pretty much the same for the same feature set. Oracle costs the same are sql server and db/2 within a percent or two.

The second tier database manufacturers (openbase, frontbase, mimer etc) charge significantly less.

Finally there are the open source databases and companies that try to sell them.

Personally I don't see how anybody can charge for databases these except to the largest organizations. The killer feature seems to be real and reliable replication and clustering. Postgres as fine as it is lacks a decent replication schema (slony can not be used over unreliable links). Mysql replicates OK for must common scenarios but the replication does not honor foreign key relationships or transactional integrity.

So if you need clustering and replication then pay otherwise use a free one. If you are going to pay then at least pay for something that does not tie you to an operating system.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Anonymous Coward]

From the post:
>Have you looked at what oracle costs these days?
Yes, I have. There is this Oracle XE thing which is free as in free beer. It is not open source and limited to 4GB of data (the Oracle internal stuff not adding up to the 4GB limit). But it is free.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Splab]

Postgress lack advanced integrity constraints and assertions.

MySQL isn't ACID out of the box.

Ohh, and the big three DB vendors have all put out a free version of their respective DB.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[killjoe]

I don't want to get into an argument about the advancedness of postgres integrity or acidness of Mysql. I will simply point out that those are just two of the many open source databases on the market. Some of them such as SAPdb, firebird/interbase and openingress have been in use in some of the largest companies in the world in real world applications.

Yes all threee manufacturers have put out a free version and if you are happy living their restrictions then you should try them. The only thing you have to worry about is if your needs ever exceed their limitations then you will have to pay. Personally I just don't see the point. Either your needs are light and you don't need one of the big three or your needs are heavy and you must fork out the bucks.

The way things are going in three to five years nobody will be able to charge for a database. Look how fast mysql and postgres are gaining features.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[killjoe]

If you are running a web site then you should consider that some of the world busiest sites including /. run on mysql. Apparently there is a way to run websites with mysql and still get high availability.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Eivind Eklund]

Could you give some more details about what types of integrity constraints that's missing in PostgreSQL?

I've found it able to handle all I've wanted to do, and I'm curious at what the cases that aren't possible to handle are.

Eivind.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[jani]

The way things are going in three to five years nobody will be able to charge for a database. Look how fast mysql and postgres are gaining features.

Why do you think that?

You still have to pay for Windows 2003 Server, even though you'll get perfectly functional competing operating systems for free.

You still have to pay for your MacOS X upgrade, even though you'll get ...

Similar examples in software abound.

Businesses like paying for their software.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Anonymous Coward]

Businesses like paying for their software.

Indeed. Often this happens under the delusion that they have someone to blame if things go down which makes one wonder if they ever looked at those EULAs....

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[killjoe]

Nobody likes paying for software. Business pay for software because they think they get a better product. The difference between databases and operating systems is that open source databases are being used by thousands of businesses all over the world in real life applications. Businesses people are basically herd animals. They follow the crowd. Once you get a large enough following then all the business people sitting on the fence jump on your side.

Business people are always afraid that their competiion is spending less then them and making more then them. If you pay for SQL server and you competitor doesn't pay for their database then they have an advantage over you.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[DaBigEnchilada]

My understanding of MySQL licensing is that unless you're non-commercial (or non-profit?), MySQL is in fact _not_ free. You can "beat the price" with, say, PostgreSQL. I'm currently working in an organization that's beginning to use MySQL for new web sites and applications and some of the other posts on this issue are correct: MySQL is still not fully-featured, high-availability features have a long way to go, etc.
Also, I would love to be able to say "that'll get 'er done" and finish up my work. Unfortunately, if you can't sell management on the fact that it'll get the job done _and_ get it done to the desired specifications, the "get 'er done" part isn't all that's important.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Anonymous Coward]

Businesses Pay for software because they can guarentee levels of support through that method. Finding reliable, consistent open source support doesn't come for free either. So either way businesses are paying. Better to pay up front where support becomes a cost for the company than use a product where the company makes it's money through support.

Which business model makes more sense from a business viewpoint for getting good support quickly?

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[richlv]

"...now would be a good time to switch over to a "real" database. "Real" is one of those words that Doug ought to add to his list of words. It means "expensive". Many managers seem to have this idea that it is invariably true that you get what you pay for, and that therefore nothing that is available for free can possibly be any good."

http://googleplanet.blogspot.com/2005/12/how-googl e-decided-to-stay-with-mysql.html

"The moral of the story is that sometimes, and in particular with free software, you get more than what you pay for."

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[markhb]

Business pay for software because they think they get a better product.

They also like the fact that there is a legal entity to sue if things go pear-shaped.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Fred_A]

The problem with MySQL certainly isn't availability as such, it's more with the availability of functions ant tools. To run most websites it's fine despite what database maniacs say. OTOH to run a country's social security database, it wouldn't be my first choice ;).

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[richlv]

were you aiming for 'funny' ? :)
no, really. eulas for all big softare vendors will shake off all the responsibility they can.
has there ever been a case when a software supplier like ms or oracle has been sued for losses to businesses - and had to pay ?

if that would be the case, ms would have shelled out insane amounts of money after each worm/virus outbreak - they were massive.

of course, it is also possible that you didn't add "... but in reality it's only to comfort them morally"

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[eneville]

"The way things are going in three to five years nobody will be able to charge for a database. Look how fast mysql and postgres are gaining features."

People out there believe the FUD and lack practicle experience, so they pay up, no matter.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[jcidiotashram]

Businesses like paying for their software.... and let the vendor be accountable if the system goes down.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Anonymous Coward]

Better to pay up front where support becomes a cost for the company than use a product where the company makes it's money through support.

Bollocks.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[kpharmer]

> The big three database manufacturers all charge pretty much the same for the same feature set. Oracle costs the same are
> sql server and db/2 within a percent or two.

Not in my experience: db2 is often 50% the cost of Oracle, especially since partitioning is an extra $10k/cpu for oracle and a completely usable form of partitioning is included within the base db2 product.

Right now I've got a multi-terabyte data warehouse running on a db2 license that costs $1500/cpu. If I wanted it directly accessible on the internet then it would run $7500/cpu.

> Personally I don't see how anybody can charge for databases these except to the largest organizations. The killer feature
> seems to be real and reliable replication and clustering.

No, those are just the features that the open source community seems to want to target. But why? They're both typically used for failover, and the commercial products have far better failover solutions (and ones that actually work across geographical separated data centers).

Bi-directional replication is at best a pain in the butt and when used to actually consolidate data its lack of tranformation abilitities stinks.

Clustering can deliver either availability or speed. The oracle solution is geared towards availability, the informaix/db2 solution towards speed (it's like a beowulf architecture, but been around for ten years). The former is ok, but again doesn't work across data centers, the latter is ok - and ideal when you've got 20 TB, but otherwise overkill.

What about partitioning & parallelism? Why use a product like db2 or oracle? How about because they can save you huge dollars on hardware? Take this example: you've got a million rows of data a day for 365 days on a 4-way SMP with 8 gbytes of memory and four disk arrays. Users run a wide variety of queries for reporting & analysis. Assume that your hardware cost $88,000 (list) for high-end models of this type.

If you're using postgresql or mysql many of those queries are going to result in tablescans - in which the database has to read every single one of those 365 million rows. This is because btree indexes don't work if you're selecting more than 1-3% of the data. So, want to see all data for previous month for monthly reports? Fine, but you'll have to wait four minutes to scan all data.

On the other hand, if you're using db2 for example you'll probably want to partition (with MDC - available even in free product) on day. When you query on a month of data DB2 will scan just that one month - 1/12 of the table. Then when it does that it'll run the query in parallel - giving you 4x the performance of the single-threaded queries from mysql & postgresql. Then you've also got fine-grained memory tuning, a wide variety of optimizations and a fast optimizer - capacle of handling complex queries. Ignoring the performance benefits of the latter features (only because difficult to quantity) and just using the first two - you're going to get 48x faster performance from db2 than mysql or postgresql. That query that took 10 minutes on msyql? It'll run in four seconds on db2.

How much would you spend on hardware to try to get that mysql query to run in 4 seconds? Far more than the cost of oracle or db2!

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[JulesLt]

Last time I looked, Oracle XE was free (as in beer).

Now there are plenty of limitations (one CPU only, max of 2 or 4Gb of data) but still sufficient for the type of solutions mySQL has traditionally been used for (and if you get to 2Gb of data you can probably afford standard edition). Plus you can always have multiple instances providing different services. However, if your architecture just requires an RDBMS I would go with something that is just that, rather than a heavy platform solution.

IMO - Oracle XE is actually targeting SQL Server's free edition, not mySQL. I've seen Oracle present on the issue and they don't think they would win any mySQL customers over, as mySQL users have already rejected a free proprietary database. SQL Server, on the other hand, is worrying them. What they said was along the lines of : Someone starts developing an application on SQL Server's free edition - it grows and then they need SQL Server enterprise edition. That's a lost sale for Oracle. But it's also how many apps grow, rather than people starting out with an enterprise app / database requirement.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[hansbury]

You've pretty much summed it up there. However, there is one other area that Oracle has a pretty clear advantage in and that's the row-level security. Many web sites don't need this type of architecture, but if you're working in the government or health-care spaces, it could be very important.

Oracle's row-level security allows government applications to host data of multiple clearance levels in a single database and be sure that only user's with the correct clearance level sees the data. Similar usage occurs in the health-care with the data regulations on their end (HIPAA).

Sure, there are many other ways to support this in code or off the shelf software, but that won't necessarily stop someone whose determined enough to get around the application code itself.

I am anything but an Oracle fanboy, by the way. I actually can't stand the majority of their products (that is, anything that's not the database), but their DB does provide some seriously needed features if you are dealing with particularly sensitive data. And I don't know of any other database (free or otherwise) that can support that kind of fine-grained access control without coding. (I'm sure someone will correct me, if I'm wrong here)

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Linegod]

You understand wrong. MySQL is GPL and has been since ~1995.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Etyenne]

It might be true, but I never heard this argument outside of OS (usually, Windows) advocates. Can you quote a CIO saying "I want someone to sue !"

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Zontar The Mindless]

My understanding of MySQL licensing is that unless you're non-commercial (or non-profit?), MySQL is in fact _not_ free.

That's not how it works.

This is how it works, more or less:

1. SIMPLE (OWN) USE: You can use MySQL *yourself* for whatever purpose without charge. If you make money from it, how nice for you.

2. REDISTRIBUTION: If your app using MySQL is GPL (or another approved licence), then you can redistribute at no charge. If your app isn't GPL (or another approved licence), then you need to buy a licence to distribute MySQL with your app.

See http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/faq.h tml

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Etyenne]

The way things are going in three to five years nobody will be able to charge for a database. Look how fast mysql and postgres are gaining features.

Well, many organisation have a lot of ressources invested in Oracle and have large application built around Oracle-specific features. Oracle also have a lot of mindshare among DBA. They are not going to switch overnight. They will continue to pay Oracle for support and upgrade for along time to come, because it's cheaper and safer to do so.

I predict a very slow but steady decline for the big database vendors. It might take a decade or two before OSS database got a significant portion of the enterprise market. In the meantime, Oracle and cie will try to diversify into related markets : ERP, dev tools, etc.

Ho wait, that's already happening ! Too bad these segments are also being commoditized ...

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[jedidiah]

I like Slashdot and all but it simply doesn't rate having a commercial RDBMS behind it.

You don't buy a "serious solution" because it will chug along and be invisible 99.9% of the time. You buy a "serious solution" because a planetary scale support apparatus will be at your disposal once you hit that nasty 0.1% . It's kind of like having the entire Linux developer community at your disposal but without their ability to blow you off if they really want to.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[NineNine]

Businesses like paying for their software.

Actually, our business pays for Windows Server and Windows 2000 Pro because our important software is Windows-only.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[jedidiah]

If you submit a highest level support incident to Oracle, they will want you at their disposal until the problem is solved. They will work on it 24/7 handing it off to people in different countries and will expect the same commitment level from you AND your manager.

THAT is what you pay through the nose for.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Richard_at_work]

They (MySQL) also argue that if you create the client libraries yourself and talk through the available sockets, you still need to either license your app under the GPL or buy a commercial license - essentially the protocol is enough to force the license on you and you dont need to use any of their code, or so they claim.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Ian Wolf]

Besides Oracle is much more polite when they tell you "RTFM".

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[markhb]

I realize that the EULAs say "you can't sue us." I also realize that the big operators don't really want those tested in court... so if you have enough of a bank account to fund a lawsuit (remember, in the US, it isn't "loser pays"), then you can, perhaps, squeeze more out of a support contract than someone who doesn't.

IANAL, but so far as MS and viruses go, I think it doubtful that you'd get a jury to hold them liable for the malicious acts of others, and I also doubt that a jury would find them negligent for the overall design of Windows and VBA. Finding Oracle liable for your downtime because "Unbreakable" 9i segfaulted and corrupted a terabyte of your financial data is far more likely.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL is great for a simple use.
For "professionnal" use, I prefere using Oracle XE.
Oracle XE is at the same price as MySQL... free and installed in 5 minutes!

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database /xe/index.html

The limitation? It will use up to 1gb RAM and 1 CPU. There is only one database (instance... not number of users) and it is limited to 4gb in size...
When you have reach these limits, you need a better server who is more expensive than the license of 10g itself...

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[mrchaotica]

Just like how everyone sues Microsoft whenever Windows crashes or loses data or gets rooted or sends your personal information to Nigeria or whatever, right?

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides Oracle is much more polite when they tell you "RTFM".

RTFM = Read The Fucking Metalink

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Svartalf]

Try suing them. It'll be funny. It'll be hillarious. In most cases, the legal disclaimers
they pile on your usage limit what you can and can't do in regards to a system failing and
doing financial damages or physical ones. Unless you can prove gross negligence on their
part with a flaw (and even then...it's hard to make it stick in the first place. Otherwise
we'd be seeing class-actions being fielded against Microsoft- and been seeing them some time
now...) you're not going to get very far with a lawsuit.

The "we can sue someone if we buy it" line has worn quite thin. Businesses may THINK that
they can sue someone over a failure in a system component, but in business, it's "you're on
your own"- if you get fubared over something that someone else did and you didn't do your
due dilligence it's your own damn fault things went south unless the other party can be proven
to have been criminally negligent. It's always been that way.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[scotch]

How often does this happen? Never, as far as I can tell. Maybe it's the EULAs or disclaimers that come with commercial software, or maybe it's the 900-lb gorilla effect (Oracle, Microsoft, and others), or maybe the threat of litigation is silently applied in back rooms and I am simply ignorant.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[jschrod]

References to keys in other databases.

As well as queries over tables in several databases.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[jedidiah]

They don't need to.

They have diagnostic tools that bypass that sort of shenanigan.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Splab]

That would fall under assertions, check is for local table integrity, assertions is for database integrity.

The Check problems I've been faceing was back in 7.x so things might very well have changed since then, but I had trouble with basic check constraints, such as checking the number of certain keys wasn't kombined with any other keys more than x times.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[WuphonsReach]

And I don't know of any other database (free or otherwise) that can support that kind of fine-grained access control without coding. (I'm sure someone will correct me, if I'm wrong here)

I'm curious as well. (Although I think I can meet my needs with customized views... maybe... I'm still thinking about the architecture / design.)

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[fimbulvetr]

What about partitioning & parallelism? Why use a product like db2 or oracle? How about because they can save you huge dollars on hardware? Take this example: you've got a million rows of data a day for 365 days on a 4-way SMP with 8 gbytes of memory and four disk arrays. Users run a wide variety of queries for reporting & analysis. Assume that your hardware cost $88,000 (list) for high-end models of this type.

I love this feature of databases, and just thought I'd mention that this is available in the beta version of mysql now.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Lally Singh]

If you see your app growing later, then one of the big three will be useful. If you use one of the free versions for small-scale, it's an easy transition. Start off with one of the free ones, and you've got some growing pains coming.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[IdleTime]

Well, it is more than just that...

- Partitioning of data
- Oracle Cluster Filesystem for storage
- Automatic Storage Management, one instance handles all phsyical storage
- Spatial data
- Oracle text for handling of all types of text, any language, free text search
- Performance monitoring
- Diagnostics
.... etc...

The list is painfully long when you talk about features missing in Open Source databases and no, beeing a big hitter on the web does not mean you put a heavy load on the database, that is light weight work. Logging drilling data from your favourite oil rig is, storing and controlling Hubble Space Telescope data is, handling ATM transactions are. I have not seen any OSS database used for such operations.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[drinkypoo]

I like Slashdot and all but it simply doesn't rate having a commercial RDBMS behind it.

Slashdot is a business. The absolute only logistic reason not to use Oracle is if MySQL (or whatever else) can do the job. If it made more sense to use Oracle, then yes, it would rate it. This is an insanely popular website. Pretty funny that it came out of an ordinary blog - now it's an extraordinarily wacky blog :P

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[drinkypoo]

They can claim that all they want, but even the DMCA guarantees the right to reverse-engineer for the purposes of interoperability, and MySQL can't say SHIT about a non-GPL client library. Well, they can say anything they want, but it won't make them right.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[drinkypoo]

If you make your money through support, are you going to spend more money on development, which isn't your primary revenue center, or on your support staff? Yeah, thanks.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Just Some Guy]

On the other hand, if you're using db2 for example you'll probably want to partition (with MDC - available even in free product) on day.

Is there any reason you're not also partitioning the PostgreSQL database, other than to make it look bad in the fictional benchmark? Maybe you can do more advanced partitioning with DB2 or Oracle - don't know, haven't used 'em - but PostgreSQL is certainly capable of the trivial example you mentioned.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Zontar The Mindless]

I think the reasoning could be something like this: "Reverting to LGPL for the client libraries [which is where this sort of discussion almost invariably leads] would give people carte-blanche to write non-free-as-in-beer AND non-free-as-in-speech apps against MySQL, and we don't think that's a very nice thing to want to do with something we let you use for free".

I'm not sure I agree with that 100%, but I do like the idea of promoting openness... as well as the idea of getting paid a little something for doing so. ;)

Please bear in mind that I do NOT speak for MySQL AB in this or any other matter - this is just my take on the policy, and I could be dead wrong about the rationale behind it.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Anonymous Coward]

And you would do this in Oracle how?

You must come from a Sybase or MS SQL or MySQL background.

It's a matter of design. In Oracle and Postgres, you would not put tables that need to see each other in different databases. You would put them in different schemas. That's without getting into the whole dblink thing, which is available with both Oracle and Postgres.

Before point in time recovery for Sybase and MS SQL, you would also - if you were a good DBA - not put related tables in different databases. But schema support sucked on those two (and continues to, excepting MS SQL 2005, where they've made improvements), so people often did it even though it meant backups weren't truly consistent (again, until PITR recovery was an available feature).

So I think you're comparing apples and oranges. It's not much different than saying Postgres lacks Oracle's varchar2 datatype. By name, yes, but it doesn't lack an equivalent way of doing this.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[wenchmagnet]

DB2 Express-C is an great option too. Furthermore, it is not limited to 4GB of data but 4GB of RAM.

Extracted from the IBM DB2 Express-C product page:

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/db2/udb/editi on-expressc.html
----
DB2 Express-C, a version of DB2 Universal Database Express Edition (DB2 Express) for the community, is a no-charge data server for use in development and deployment.

Maximum processors: 2
Maximum addressable memory: 4GB

Business partners may choose to register for free redistribution of DB2 Express-C with their products and applications.
---

Considering that its a fairly painless process to become an IBM business parter, this should help a lot of people who want to use it with their own products.

DISCLOSURE: I work for IBM, but I copied this text from the product page linked above.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[kpharmer]

> Is there any reason you're not also partitioning the PostgreSQL database, other than to make it look bad in the fictional benchmark?
> Maybe you can do more advanced partitioning with DB2 or Oracle - don't know, haven't used 'em - but PostgreSQL is certainly capable of
> the trivial example you mentioned.

Nah, I usually don't consider approaches using inheritance or union alls, except in desparate conditions. It theoretically works, but in my experience is much more work to implement, can be a problem to alter within a transaction, often isn't 100% compatible with other sql operations(load?), doesn't support etc.

From the doc you provided:
    "As we can see, a complex partitioning scheme could require a substantial amount of DDL. "
    another comment ends with "So performance can be drastically worse if you use partitions."

So, yeah - this is like partitioning-lite. Enough to work in some narrowly-scoped situations, but not so well that you want to make it a part of your general solutions. You certainly wouldn't want to create 365 daily partitions this way: that would be 365 or 366 tables within a single ddl script (ugh). Plus, it still doesn't address parallelism - so your 4 or 8 way smp is stuck scanning the data with a single cpu.

Postgresql is a very cool database, but it still has a way to go with this kind of functionality. It's moving quickly, so it'll be cool to see a strong solution here within a couple of years. But until it has something bullet-proof I'm in no hurry to bet my career on it.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[killjoe]

BHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Yes there is a business man out there who thinks... Hey I'll buy sql server because I can sue MS if it crashes and I lose data.

BHAHAHAHAHAHA.

You funny!

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[killjoe]

"I like Slashdot and all but it simply doesn't rate having a commercial RDBMS behind it."

Why? Because you don't like the business? Because you don't like what the business does? Because you don't like who runs the business?

Anyway why should it matter what the business does ot how much you like the business. We are talking about technical issues here.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[killjoe]

What I mean is that in five years Oracle will be giving away their database. Not that people stop using oracle. They have already slashed their prices and have made a free version available that's quite capabable. They already make a lot of money off of software that runs on the datatabase like financials and such. The database is on it's way to being a commoditiy. I give it five years and DB/2, SQL server and Oracle will be free to 90% of database users. They may charge for a few high end features like datacubes and whatnot but I doubt even that.

IBM and Oracle might be able charge for mainframe platforms and maybe 10+ CPUs but MS will SOL because they don't support either.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[kpharmer]

> Please bear in mind that I do NOT speak for MySQL AB in this or any other matter - this is just my take on the policy, and I
> could be dead wrong about the rationale behind it.

which is exactly what's wrong with mysql licensing: it's deliberately vague. And who exactly wants to consult with their lawyer before using a database product?

and of course, just like AT&T just changed their privacy policy to no one's surprise; who's going to be surprised when mysql gets sufficient market share to tighten up their licensing?

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[batkiwi]

Slashdot is unavailable quite a lot for posting due to DB maint, meaning that all pages are coming from the cache and not the DB. Commment/etc posting is disabled, and I'd estimate it's more than 30 minutes per day average lately. With an oracle cluster this would not be an issue.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[turbidostato]

"Depends on how much money you lose if your web site is down becuase of lack af a serious professional solution, as you call it."

I don't know about any "non professional solution" going down when deployed and on hands of a knowledgeable systems administrator.

On the other hand, I see a full lot of "professional solutions" going down real hard on a daily basis due to substandard sysadmins (heck! substandard seems to be the standard nowadays).

Curiously enough, corporations still happen to prefer "professional solutions" to "knowledgeable sysadmins".

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Nutria]

Apparently there is a way to run websites with mysql and still get high availability.

/. has something like 15,000 comments/inserts per day. That's NOTHING.

Let me emphasize that: NOTHING.

"Big databases" insert that many rows every time someone sneezes.

Re:Oracle isn't free, and mysql is

[Nutria]

You don't buy a "serious solution" because it ...

• has cluster-aware multi-threaded hot backups.
  
• has the ability to to rolling upgrades.
  
• can bump a major version number without having to dump/restore the whole database

The "planetary scale support apparatus" is also damned useful. At 03:00 EDT when the database isn't acting like the docs say it's supposed to act like, there's someone awake/at work in Europe or Australia ready to help you.

Linus?

[DuncanE]

Isn't Linus a direct feedback line to the Linux community? Does it get any more direct?

Re:Linus?

[Goaway]

Exactly! Linus is the tyrannical God-King of the open source community, so why would they need to talk to anyone else?

Re:Linus?

[DuncanE]

You subtlety changed my words to imply "Linux" means "open source" so I can only assume you are a MS/Oracle shill.

Re:Linus?

[Vancorps]

Or the parent was being sarcastic saying that Linus isn't involved in most of the Linux world. He only works on the kernel afterall. So the feedback isn't there or maybe we're all just shills of our own bias.

Re:Linus?

[Anonymous Coward]

dude. I'm so confused with all that sarcasm, or was the last comment for real?

Linux *is* "only" the kernel. (no sarcasm)

Re:Linus?

[Vancorps]

That's a fine attitude to take since that is the reality. Which kernel branch is Linus currently working on again? Not all of them? Okay, thanks.

What's all about OSDL

[wysiwia]

Many people, as also I, don't know much of OSDL beside Linus Torvalds is there employed or they care for Carrier Grade Linux (whatever that means). Yet I know OSDL has done a survey about why the Linux desktop isn't a success (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf).

But now what? Even if the reasons now are more than obvious does the OSDL take the next needed steps? Sure OSDL has created the Portland initiative, unfortunately these people aren't able to do anything about the most pressing matter, the first top inhibitor for the Linux desktop adoption. It might be these people simply don't know how to fix this problem albeit I've shown them one possible solution (http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/desktop_architect s/2005-December/000349.html).

OSDL might say that "they represent the Linux community", yet OSDL isn't able to bring Linux to success, to increase its market share to a significant amount. So I would think twice if to participate in such an organization. It's sad when even the self proclaimed speaker of the Linux community can't do better.

To say it once more, without agreeing on a single set of application guidelines, guidelines which enhance the usability and the look&feel, there's no hope. All one can say is "Yet another year without a Linux desktop".

O. Wyss

Re:What's all about OSDL

[argoff]

The purpose of the OSDL is collaberation and sharing R&D. In a proprietary world, it doesn't make sense to collaberate or to share R&D, you are more profitable forking off a bunch of proprietary extensions to differentiate and fense off features from your competitors. But in the open source community that will get you killed in a hurry, hense OSDL. If companies have R&D to do, they are better off each putting $1 of R&D for a total combined R&D of $2, $3 or $4... then each doing their own independent R&D in parallel which would average out to $1 R&D in value.

In addition, Oracle is not a member of OSDL because their core is not open source, and they have no intention to be.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[Anonymous Coward]

Damm that survey is a joke. Total mom's basement action. How about spending money on a real IT survey?

Re:What's all about OSDL

[killjoe]

""Yet another year without a Linux desktop".

What do you mean by that? Are you saying that nobody is using linux on the desktop? That linux on the desktop is not increasing? That linux desktop usage is decreasing?

Maybe it's not growing as fast as you would like but linux adoption grows every year. Every year the desktop gets better and better. Some figures suggest that linux has now caught up to the mac if not passed it.

Just because you don't like it or it's not growing at the rate you would like that doesn't mean it's not growing. I for one don't think it would be in the interest of linux to grow any faster. Sustainable and controlled growth is better then a wild burst of adoption followed by a billion newbies screaming about how their keyboard shortcuts don't work or that the message boxes have a different shading.

Look at it this way. Photoshop works now under wine. That ought to get half of slashdot whiners switching right there!

Re:What's all about OSDL

[10Ghz]

"OSDL might say that "they represent the Linux community", yet OSDL isn't able to bring Linux to success"

Linux is already a humungous success, no matter how you look at it

"to increase its market share to a significant amount."

Huh? Soon after Linux started to appear in High-Performance Computing, it quickly dominated the entire field. Linux'es use on server continues to increase and it's the second most popular OS in servers, Linux'es use on embedded devices is increasing, we have major phone-manufacturers releasing phones that run Linux. And yes, Linux'es market-share on the desktops is also increasing. What do you expect? "It's been few years already, and Linux STILL doesn't dominate the desktop-market! OSDL is a failure!". Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to "dominate" a market, where the competitor is DEEPLY entrenched with about 95% market-share?

"To say it once more, without agreeing on a single set of application guidelines, guidelines which enhance the usability and the look&feel, there's no hope."

So, you feel that OSDL should spend it's time thinking about button-order on dialog-boxes and the like? I think that your viewpoint on this matter is very narrow and VERY superficial. And what if they came up with "single set of guidelines"? How do you suggest that they then enforce those guidelines? Answer: the can't.

"All one can say is "Yet another year without a Linux desktop"."

It's on my desktop. Hell, it's on my neighbours desktop as well!

Re:What's all about OSDL

[theonetruekeebler]

Carrier Grade Linux (whatever that means)

Carrier Grade means reliable enough that the phone company and other major data carriers would use it to run a switch. That means between 99.999% and 99.99999% uptime, or between 5 about minutes and 30 seconds of total downtime per year.

Sound excessive? Those switches aren't just carrying phone calls to grandma. They carry 911 calls. Realtime FCC flight control data. Multibillion dollar bank transfers. In other words if they fail, planes collide and economies collapse.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[Anonymous Coward]

Carrier Grade also includes environment testing.
Fire testing is fun!
Moisture testing, not so much.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_Grade_Linux

Re:What's all about OSDL

[Anonymous Coward]

Carrier Grade means reliable enough that the phone company and other major data carriers would use it to run a switch. That means between 99.999% and 99.99999% uptime, or between 5 about minutes and 30 seconds of total downtime per year.

Actually, according to this page:

http://www.bcr.com/management/networking_intellige nce/reality_five_nines_20020519301.htm

OS failure does not count when the mythical "5 nines" is measured.

The way it was explained to me when I was in telephony was that the 99.999% applied only to getting a dialtone. That is, you didn't actually have to be able to call anyone, just that your line would produce that pleasing tone in your ear.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[afabbro]

Realtime FCC flight control data.

Uh, no. First, the Federal Communications Commission doesn't do flight control. And second, flight control still runs on good ol' IBM mainframe technology.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[ciggieposeur]

Everytime Slashdot mentions Linux, you bring up wyoGuide as though it's some magic bullet that would fix everything if only every Linux user started adhering to it. I've decided to respond this time instead of move on.

Here are the problems I've got with wyoGuide:

1) It assumes that developers should make new Linux applications that look and behave like established Windows applications circa 1997. Even Windows applications don't do this anymore, and users seem more than happy to use applications with skinnable eye candy rather than Office 97 menus.

2) The example language is C++, and the example toolkit is wxWindows. There are plenty of other cross-platform GUI toolkits, and other languages include cross-platform GUI as a core feature. You'll get more traction if you include more languages (Java would be a good choice, as many CS students are taught that now) and other toolkits.

3) The screenshots are all Windows. Sorry, I've got NO applications on my Linux desktop that look like that. Include some OS X and Linux screenshots and maybe people from the non-Windows side will begin listening.

4) As with #3, your tone in the document and in your Slashdot posts seems to put most of the blame on Linux developers for not making their applications resemble Windows, and then you go on inside the document and make wrong statements about non-Windows platforms:

a) Section 10.1: Linux already has a defacto standard for application paths: binary/symlink in /usr/bin, application data (including app-specific libraries) in /usr/lib/appname, documentation in /usr/share/doc/appname, and top-level configuration file in /etc/appname(.conf) . Desktop Windows applications ported to Linux should use this standard, not some dump-it-all-in-one-place-any-structure-you-want Windows-style solution (which you call "the easiest solution").

b) Section 6.1: preferences dialog. Many Mac applications do not have "Apply" or "OK" buttons, they simply apply immediately and you close the window to get out.

c) Section 3.7: On Linux, the Ctrl key is Ctrl, the Alt key is often called "Meta" but modern desktops often just leave it as Alt. Any Linux app that used Alt-C/X/V instead of Ctrl-C/X/V would be broken.

5) More of the "at all costs, make it resemble Windows" criteria in Section 3: "The standard entries in the file menu have their defined command keys as shown in the sample, if they have any. These keys are reserved and may not used elsewhere, not even if the corresponding menu entry is missing." I see that menu and think Office 97 (except that the editing filenames should be below Quit). Some applications might want those keys for other things, and some users might want to remap those functions to other keys.

6) What about keyboard accelerators, ala Alt-F -> File menu dropdown? If you're going to mandate/suggest the keyboard shortcuts, you may as well include the accelerators too.

7) You mention the Windows registry barely in passing in Section 6.3. It needs more than that: Windows applications must use the registry _correctly_ such that non-admin users can use their application.

8) You added a section for coding style? Now I'm beginning to think that you might not actually write a lot of code.

In short, when I read wyoGuide, I see a document telling me how to use one language with one toolkit to make an inconsistent Windows-like application with some "helpful" newb tips at the end.

Let me offer some suggestions:

1) Move the code snippets out to separate links. We're talking HCI design, not "low-level" implementation. Coders can always click the links to see source code snippets. And an HTML page with annotated source that links BACK to the wyoGuide would be nice.

2) Focus on successful applications that have already proven themselves cross-platform, such as Mozilla, Abiword, Gaim, LyX, etc. Show screenshots

Re:What's all about OSDL

[EraserMouseMan]

In other words if they fail, planes collide and economies collapse.

These systems are highly redundant. If a component fails none of the above happens.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[Anonymous Coward]

Dialtones are not produced unless the local loop is working. Whether the CO can handle your call is almost always a capacity matter, not a reliability one.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[theonetruekeebler]

Oopsie. Added a nine there: Please read: "between 99.999% ("five nines") and 99.9999% ("six nines")". Seven nines would be 3.2 seconds per year. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[Just Some Guy]

The way it was explained to me when I was in telephony was that the 99.999% applied only to getting a dialtone. That is, you didn't actually have to be able to call anyone, just that your line would produce that pleasing tone in your ear.

On the other hand, I've never been ubable to use a landline, at least to make local calls. Repeat: not once in my life have I ever picked up a phone and not been able to complete a local call. On one or two occasions I've received the "all circuits are busy" message when trying to call long-distance into disaster areas, but I've never personally experienced (or heard of) a local phone outage. While the 99.999% may be mythical, I'd have to anecdotally say that they come pretty darn close.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[ChrisCampbell47]

Your message is more likely to have the desired impact if you pay attention to spelling. I'm serious. You should be too. See sig and good luck.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[Watts Martin]

The way it was explained to me when I was in telephony was that the 99.999% applied only to getting a dialtone. That is, you didn't actually have to be able to call anyone, just that your line would produce that pleasing tone in your ear.

While that may have been true in telephony if we take that as "land-based voice telephone service over the last century as a whole," in telecom that surely wasn't true a decade ago, and I doubt that's changed since. The industry was already moving toward a packet-based, "data-centric" model when I was working in it in the mid-to-late '90s, and the six nine reliability we were shooting for had nothing to do with dial tones at all -- it had to do with how many packets were being delivered successfully.

Even before "VoIP" became a buzzword, data was surpassing voice traffic; from a delivery standpoint, nearly all telecom traffic now is packetized data at some point in its life. (AFAIK, it's mostly IP, in fact, since frame is fading and ATM never got a lot of traction.)

The page you point to isn't incorrect, per se, but there's a distinction between carrier equipment and "customer premise equipment" (CPE), and a lot of what that article is talking about is CPE concerns like PBXes. What the carriers are using generally does strive for five nines reliability (or better), but even if they're successful at delivering on that, it doesn't mean your office communications lines will have the same reliability.

To bring this back to the original topic, "Carrier Grade Linux" is a drive to have a Linux build that, well, pretty much doesn't go down. The OS in your office PBX failing doesn't mean JoeBob Communications' five-nines guarantee has been violated, no. However, if your PBX can't connect because JBC's Fooblitzky 3000 Gigabit "Carrier-Class" has failed due to its OS, it has been. And, so has their SLA with hundreds of their customers. Then Very Bad Things happen.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't I save my file in vi by pressing CTR+S. Linux will never succeed if you cannot CTRL+S in your text editor to save your file.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[greed]

It sure doesn't happen much any more. But, in the good ol' days, back when there was still a significant bunch of electro-mechanical switches still running the phone system, it was reasonably likely that you'd pick up the handset and get that "phone's plugged in but no dialtone" sound. Or it would take several seconds to get dialtone. The best day to try this was Mother's Day; New Year's Day and Christmas were also fairly busy. I haven't had that happen since the mid-80s; even though I was connected to the Last Remaining Electro-Mechanical Switch in Ottawa in 1991. (Which;}} s gre}t for$the}}odem.}

The digital switches have made installing sufficient capacity very economical, so if you don't get a dialtone these days, you probably want to find out if someone's just crashed their pick-up truck into a telephone pole. (Happened to a friend, who called the phone company from his cell to find out what was wrong. They didn't know. We saw the line crews and the smashed pole on the way to the store, and figured it out for ourselves.) Or maybe someone's playing "Hungry Hungry Backhoes" with the fibre.

Trivia: The DMS-100 from Northern Telecom would switch dialtone-issue from FIFO (queue) to LIFO (stack) when things got busy. The reason? People get frustrated and hang up--and if you stick with FIFO, you wind up granting dialtone to someone who's in the process of putting the handset down in the cradle... and then you do it again, and again.... So, instead, they give dialtone to the person least likely to hang up and try again--someone who just picked up the phone.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[Anonymous Coward]

While we're at it, I demand that vi also support ctrl-z for Zundo, ctrl-x for Xut, and ctrl-v for Vaste. These control keys are obvious and should be worldwide standards!

Re:What's all about OSDL

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I'm an engineer working for a pretty big company that rhymes with pony. The Non technical users are all switching to Linux on their Desktops. Y? Because it is prettier, lets them do all their work and Most important.... IT people cant detect the users as easily as in Windows which allows a blocking of big brother.

The point is... Linux will always be said to be 'not on the Desktop' because by comparisson Windows is the Desktop. Notice the capitol D. Heck in my country there are more Linux Desktops than there are Macs.

Posted AC cuz i dont want my bosses and IT dudes to know who to ask about "all that Linux hackers who just popped up oh-so suddenly"

Re:What's all about OSDL

[Anonymous Coward]

Works fine in Vim.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[wysiwia]

Everytime Slashdot mentions Linux, you bring up wyoGuide ...

That's not right, I'll bring wyoGuide up whenever it fits, so you won't find any mentioning in the Linux kernel discussions.

Please send feedback directly to the wyoguide-users mailing list, the chance of getting lost or forgotten is much smaller. Of course I try to not forgetting your comment here.

O. Wyss

Re:What's all about OSDL

[Alioth]

Planes do NOT collide due to an FAA (not FCC) radar outage. Besides - the vast majority of planes being separated will be covered by a single RADAR site (because to need separation they have to be close enough together, and if they are close together, they'll be being covered by the sweep of a single radar station). A telephone switch has nothing to do with the separation of aircraft in close proximity. In any case, if the weather is clear, the crew are looking out of the window.

Re:What's all about OSDL

[theonetruekeebler]

I meant to say FAA. I mistype that one a lot. No idea why. Sorry.

Flight data still has to move around, and that's done over SONET rings and RBOCs do indeed handle it.

Web Sight?

[nurb432]

*shudder*... site..

just a pet peeve of mine, sorry about that.

And while oracle does cost a hell of a lot, sometimes its the right choice.

Re:Web Sight?

[Anonymous Coward]

just a pet peeve of mine, sorry about that.

You started a sentence with a lower-case letter.

And while oracle does cost a hell of a lot, sometimes its the right choice.

You started another sentence with the word "and". This word is generally reserved for joining two clauses together to form a complete sentence (or simply to join two words) and its appearance at the beginning of a sentence is simply wrong.

These are just a couple of my pet peeves. I am sorry about this.

Re:Web Sight?

[nurb432]

too bad your pet peeves dont matter only mine And only mine.

Re:Web Sight?

[antek9]

Spelling nazi, meet grammar nazi. Now you two go out and play something nice.

It's 'it's' instead of 'its', isn't it? Actually, would have been funny if someone had modded grandparent in-sight-ful. No, of course it would not, but anyway... ;)

Re:Web Sight?

[drinkypoo]

You wrote "alsoe" when you (probably) intended to write "also".

Quote Out Of Context?

[TheFlyingGoat]

Ok... while he DID say the direct feedback comment, it was in response to challenges that Oracles TAB will address. His response to the question of why they're not in the OSDL is:

Let's just say that one part of the OSDL is trying to represent businesses to the Linux community. I know that a number of the members aren't heavily involved in Linux but still are members.

We basically know where to go. We have a good relationship directly with people in the Linux community. We have all our partners. So there is no immediate advantage to being a member for us.

Not to sound arrogant, but we know how to deal with the Linux community.

What he's saying is that they're fine on their own, and that they're trying to avoid some of the problems that the OSDL has.

Summary put a bit of spin on that one.

still no answer

[nietsch]

This article is pretty frustrating, as it still gives no answers why Oracle is not a member of ODSL and why they should be? As far as I know Oracle makes database and middleware tools, wich is pretty distinct from operating system kernels. Maybe they require some specific kernel modules to get some better performance in some instances, but does that require them to be a memberof ODSL?

So in the end i think the PR department scored another media exposure without any news.

Re:still no answer

[FST777]

Very few members of OSDL are actually kernel-producers. Oracle could well be on their place in OSDL because they could have a certain influence in the direction Linux is heading, as well as paying for it (no small thing to pay Linus).

But my question is: why is MySQL AG not a member? (some above stated they where, as a reason Oracle isn't. Look at the memberlist on osdl.org before making such bold statements)
Or when "producer of Linux" is THE requirement (I think it shouldn't): why are Linspire Inc. and Canonical Ltd. not members?

Re:still no answer

[Anonymous Coward]

MySQL AB is co-sponsoring the 2006 SCO(!!!)-Forum. Need I say more?

Oracle is not your enemy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is!

All humor aside, at least Larry and friends are trying to bolster Linux as a serious solution. Linux will only gain ground from Oracle embracing it.

Is Oracle perfect? Of course not! But they are the kind of capitalists that the rest of the corporate world will listen to.

Maybe because of Oracle?

[mk_is_here]

Oracle dislike open source, and OSDL dislike that...

Re:Article summarized in five words:

[Anonymous Coward]

"We're" is one word, sorry.

Hey, Postgre is free.

[Anonymous Coward]

PostgreSQL is a serious professional solution, and it's open-source, and it's free of charge.

And although it apparently isn't as well known as it could be, it's not some niche or academic project -- it has a long track record of commercial use.

MySQL has excelled in both ease of installation and sheer speed, but Postgre has about caught up there. Whereas MySQL is catching up in Postgre's "real database" features, especially on reliability of data. It's an interesting situation -- keep an eye on both!

(Personally I'd bite the nowadays fairly soft bullet and go Postgre from the beginning, as it keeps up better when business grows. But Oracle it is not, I wouldn't push it on some Fortune 500 operation...)

There are others as well, InnoDB and whatnot. I'm not at all familiar with them, but I'm sure they each have their strengths.

Re:Hey, Postgre is free.

[DrSkwid]

Where do people get the idea that Postgresql administration is hard ?

And that FLUSH PRIVILEGES is ease of use in nutshell.

Re:Hey, Postgre is free.

[zlatko]

It's not *that* hard, but sometimes you can get into trouble.

Re:Article summarized in five words:

[DrSkwid]

"We're" isn't a word at all.

Some may wonder ...

[davFr]

Some may wonder why OSDL, [...] does not include Oracle as a member.

Really? No, I don't wonder. Because I certainly don't care.

Next interesting Slashdot topic : "Some may wonder why Intel never went in the screwdriver business" ...

MOD PARENT FUNNY

[imroy]

Seriously, more like PostgreSQL or FireBird.

Oracle's own agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that was really kind of revolting is that OSDL goes out and basically says that they represent the Linux community while there is no direct feedback line back to the community.

Isn't it what OSDL's mailing lists and groups are for?

So there is no immediate advantage to being a member for us.

Perhaps Oracle shouldn't blame it on the lack of "feedback line" then.

You kidding?

[Moraelin]

That's not only arrogant, but smug as well. Does the OSDL need members with attitudes such as this?

You kidding? Dunno about OSDL specifically, but the F/OSS scene seems to be _made_ of smug and arrogant personalities.

Re:Article summarized in five words:

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it isn't.

They kinda have a point

[MikeRT]

It would be hard to have an organization that "represents the Linux community." That'd almost be like herding cats because it's so diverse and anarchaic. Better to stay out, leave their motives as a business clear as they do now and work with those they need to while assuaging the fears of others. Seems that they regard OSDL almost like a rat regards a ship that is starting to have trouble at sea.

Re:They kinda have a point

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle's attitude seems to be that since they dedicate some resources (read: money) to linux development, that they "own" a piece of linux, and Linus should do what they say. They really don't get F/OSS, at least at the level of the quoted middle manager. Boo hoo for them.

Exactly like you say: it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for someone to "represent" the "linux community" (read: "incorporate" all the "features that Oracle wants"). Oracle can't hold Linux/Linus hostage, and they're crying like babies.

Re:What's all about Vista

[dwandy]

I submit as argument that the #1 reason MS Windows is so popular is because it was so heavily pirated. As people used it at home (for free!) they either were the boss who made the decision to buy Windows, or convinced the boss that they should go with it.
Microsoft spent most of the 90s looking the other way when it came even to business piracy, while talking tough through the BSA. Even now, when they have ramped up their aggresiveness, (AFAIK) they have yet to sue a single home-user, still only targeting businesses.

Enter Vista
This will severely limit* Joe Average's ability to pirate Windows.
Faced with being either unable to pirate, or an unwillingness to divulge the personal info (I know people switching now as Genuine Advantage is rolling out), people will look for alternatives.

So, I suggest that Vista will be the single biggest event in Linux desktop adoption.

I suspect Apple knows it, and that is the reason for their current ads doing a Mac/Windows comparison - because they also see Vista as a possible catalyst ... 'look for alternatives' is really Mac and Linux at this point.

*limit != eliminate, and the less 'average' Joe's will also be less limited.

Sounds kinda arrogant

[Anonymous Coward]

Refering to Linus, Coekaerts is quoted in TFA as saying: "he still doesn't know a thing."

Suprising that Oracle's spin doktors let this one out in the wild.

Re:Sounds kinda arrogant

[jedidiah]

He certainly wouldn't be the first Linux user to be at total fanboy when it comes to Linus. Not everyone treats Linus like he can walk on water. This is nothing really new. Linus is a systems programmer, not a CTO.

We're mostly engineers here, right?

[hey!]

If you are running a web site then you should consider that some of the world busiest sites including /. run on mysql. Apparently there is a way to run websites with mysql and still get high availability.

So, we're all engineers here, right? That means that we should understand that a bird's wing is an elegant solution for lofting a sparrow, it's not necessarily the most efficient and reliable design for an airplane.

Or that a Bugatti Veyron may be the fastest production vehicle in the world (top speed 253 mph), but if you have to move 50,000 tons of banannas a hundred miles from port to a distribution center five hundred miles away, you're better off with semi-trailer (maybe 80mph?).

"Busiest sites" is almost meaningless with respect to the database tier.

Re:We're mostly engineers here, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, we're all engineers here, right?

If that statement is true, the word has become so diluted that it's meaningless.

Re:We're mostly engineers here, right?

[navyjeff]

but if you have to move 50,000 tons of banannas a hundred miles from port to a distribution center five hundred miles away, you're better off with semi-trailer (maybe 80mph?).

I hope you have about 500 semi trucks handy. Or several freight trains.

Re: they like paying and we like being paid

[namekuseijin]

"Businesses like paying for their software."

Why, pay open-source developers to work on specific projects, then.

or donate to large free software projects and Foundations. or just contribute back code...

but no, let's pay compulsory taxes to this large marketing-drone just so we can be reassured that we can blame someone...

Re:Article summarized in five words:

[henrygondorff]

TOAD is a smart insult for Oracle people. ;-)

Huh?

[sammy baby]

So?

MySQL isn't a member either. On the other hand, Red Hat and Novell are, despite the fact that they're clearly competitors. So what does MySQL have to do with it?

Re: they like paying and we like being paid

[Millenniumman]

Would you hire a free electrician with the knowledge that if your electrical system broke down a day after he worked on it, he wouldn't be accountable?

Re:Let's say no to Oracle, NVidia, ATI and the res

[Millenniumman]

Why is that a shame? Being opposed to proprietary software is just as ridiculous as being opposed to open source.

The Linux community agrees

[iabervon]

It was only back in February that people in the Linux community were pointing out that the OSDL organization wasn't actually particularly useful to the community, beyond funnelling corporate money to a few worthy individual developers. They had a list of requests for things OSDL could do to actually be useful, and they also, for the first time, got a community representative on the board of directors.

If you actually look at the OSDL's stated mission, it's all about attracting corporate interest to Linux, not about actually getting any open source development done directly. It's still a valuable function, but if Oracle wants to interact with the community (like, for example, pushing Ubuntu's kernel patches through the review process and into the mainline kernel), OSDL isn't going to be particularly useful, assuming that Oracle has employees who're active in the community (like, for example, Randy Dunlap).

Re:The Linux community agrees

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a world of difference between "attracting corporate interest" and "pushing .. patches through the review process and into the mainline kernel". Just why, exactly, should Oracle receive special consideration for it's kernel patches? Because they are a corporation? Not. Because they are "active in the community"? Not. Oracle's kernel patches should receive the same consideration as anyone else's kernel patches; they should be evaluated on their merits. OSDL's mission to "attract corporate interest" in no way implies that they intend to shower corporations with special favors.

Re:What's all about Vista

[Vancorps]

Good luck with that since the vast vast majority of Vista sales will be through new computer purchases. I don't think it will be a catalyst for anything despite all the hype in either direction.

If Microsoft didn't already have that market share you'd have a point but since the market is there's they no longer depend on piracy. Furthermore when they come across businesses pirating they always gives them the option to license properly before suing them. I'm not sure the number of times MS has ever sued a company for such practices. I know they would be targeting system builders selling pirated copies of Windows as authentic but MS recognizes that this happens which is why someone that falls victim to this get's Windows for $1 if report the company.

I'd say for the most part Microsof still looks away to this day. There token voice has just gotten a little louder in the last couple years.

Re: they like paying and we like being paid

[Svartalf]

Here's the reality of it.

In the case of contracting out the work to the OS developers, it would very likely
be a situation of them fixing the things because they're personally accountable.

In the case of a company like Oracle, it would very likely be a situation of them
trying to fix it, not because they're accountable but because it's a
potential customer loss situation. If your problem is the only one and you're
not looking to be costing them customers or money to NOT fix it- it plain flat
won't get fixed. If you end up getting financially damaged by the whole affair,
unless the company can be shown to be criminally negligent, you won't
be able to sue for anything because it's been disclaimed that the software isn't
really guaranteed to serve any purpose other than to part dollars from your
wallet. (Just read their licensing on the stuff sometime...)

A business that uses your thinking to justify all of this is not looking at
what they agree to when they buy their software and are foolishly thinking
they're "okay" when they buy Oracle's SQL DBMS or Microsoft's Office suite
or their OS products- that there'll be someone to fix it for them if it
breaks and if not, they can sue.

Diagnostics - Pots and kettles

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoted from the article:

Initial failure should show enough information so that we can help customers figure out what's wrong. I think we need to do quite a bit more work on the Linux side to make that happen. It's not easy to do and it's a case by case basis.

This is something that Oracle could take notice of. Have you ever tried to debug problems in apps? Or see which user is consuming resource in the database? While what he says is correct, they have more problems in their own software than Linux has.

Someone to sue, only on Slashdot

[alexhmit01]

The only place I have EVER seen a company "want someone to sue" if something goes wrong is on Slashdot. In the real world, most businesses want to avoid lawsuits because only the lawyers win. The only times companies want legal battles is to establish barriers to entry... Where the cost of creating the barrier is less than the monopoly rents extracting, generate the lawsuit. Lawsuits are done to keep competition out, not as a reasonable way of recovering costs from a vendor.

Accountability is NOT the same as lawsuits. Microsoft is accountable for to me, because if I don't like their software, I don't buy it. OpenBSD is not accountable to me because they believe they are giving me something for free and therefore don't care about money coming in. Buying things (like RHEL, or OpenBSD CDs, etc.) creates some accountability, because they lose money if they don't keep customers happy.

Creating a financial incentive to make customers happy creates accountability. In Linux land, certain features get implemented because someone scratches an itch, or because a business needs a feature and pays someone to implement it. Those are advantages of the "open source model," but a drawback from accountability. I am a customer, I want to know that the aggregate of their customer base matters as well. The millions of $400-$500/year customers need to have their interests respected, and an environment where you have to be big enough to pay a programmer to implement the feature leaves us all out.

It's all about accountability, and a company that looks out for its customers. It's not about "someone to sue" if things go wrong.

Alex

Re:Someone to sue, only on Slashdot

[jrockway]

Not buying this argument. When you use open source, you are accountable. you can pay someone to implement features. If you don't like the work they do, you can find someone else.

Contrast this to, say, Oracle, where if you want a new feature you are SOL and it ends there. I'm sure Oracle would like to be accountable, but, frankly, you don't matter.

> The millions of $400-$500/year customers need to have their interests respected, and an environment where you have to be big enough to pay a programmer to implement the feature leaves us all out.

When you buy software, you're obviously paying the programmer. There's just 15 levels of managers that you're also paying. If enough "$400-$500/year" customers get together, they can pay someone to add whatever feature they want to an open source program. Some features can probably even be implemented for $500, if it's only a few hours of work.

Re:Someone to sue, only on Slashdot

[alexhmit01]

You're not buying my argument? You think that accountability means someone to sue and companies want to sue vendors?

I'm not arguing AGAINST open source programming, I use very few programs that aren't available under a free license... my desktop apps are, but business infrastructure is now.

BTW: the ideal scenario would be paying programmers to add features, given an existing free base, but that isn't that practical. It means hunting down a programmer, negotiating a rate, etc. These are all costly things, likely costing me 2-3 hours of time, which isn't free.

However, accountable companies have customer service, ways to put in feature requests, etc. Projects aren't "accountable" in that manner.

Alex

Re:Someone to sue, only on Slashdot

[jrockway]

> ways to put in feature requests

True, but do you ever get anything back? (And what if you have a really good idea for a feature; Oracle makes millions, and you get the privilege of buying it back from them. Great.)

Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

If you actually look at the OSDL's stated mission [osdl.org], it's all about attracting corporate interest to Linux, not about actually getting any open source development done directly.

If they were REALLY an OPEN SOURCE development lab, they would represent Open Source. Where is OpenBSD? FreeBSD?

The name is nothing more than a cheap attempt to co-opt the term Open Source.

Re:What's all about Vista

[Danse]

Good luck with that since the vast vast majority of Vista sales will be through new computer purchases.

The same could be said for pretty much every version since 95. Yet we still have seen a ton of piracy out there. How do you reconcile that?

Re:What's all about Vista

[dwandy]

Yeah, I don't think M$ ever directly goes after anyone; I meant the Bully Software Alliance. And they have stepped up their aggresiveness and now offer a $200k reward to snitches.

As for new computers, yes the Big Boys preload, but not all PC sales have Win preloaded. From http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-5561113.html

Last quarter, for example, Microsoft saw revenue in the Windows client unit grow by 5 percent, but PC shipments grew more than twice that fast.

The BSA says 1/3 of the world software is pirated, and about 1/4 in North America. All that market share is up for grabs. From http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,121974,0 0.asp

The study found that 35 percent of software worldwide is pirated. In North America alone, the piracy rate for software is 22 percent.

People (generally) don't pirate to spite the author. They either can't afford it, or don't want to pay. Genuine Advantage won't change this fact. Therefore, of these people, some percentage won't purchase Windows, and will consider that free linux thing they've heard about...
Estimations (can't find a quick link!) that I've seen put Linux around/under 5%. So even 10% of the available market share would be in the order of a 50% increase in Linux' current market share. It's taken near 15yrs to get here, so if in the next coupl'a years Linux was to get to 7% or 8% that would be a respectable increase.
...and just imagine what getting 1/3 the available (split evenly between Mac, Win and Linux) means going from some 5% to some 12%-16% market share. okok, perhaps that's being a little wishful, but, well, a guy can dream, right?

Anyways, just think how much of an impact Linux has had on computers with only a sub-5% market share, and then just imagine how much more influential it will become as the numbers grow up to and over 10%...

GNU?

[Anonymous Coward]

The open source people can have hissy fits about how GNU/Linux shouldn't be the name (it should) but, correct me if I'm wrong, the Free Software community has no representation on this list. GNU and the Free Software Foundataion? I might be wrong, but I don't see it on the list. Doesn't FSF contribute to Linux (GCC!). I could just be stupid, but it seems like the Free Software community needs representation.

Dealing with the Linux community?

[Rheingold]

Not to sound arrogant, but we know how to deal with the Linux community.

Does that include telling Larry to STFU?

like basically like the community

[EllynGeek]

Articulate he is not.

Re:Article summarized in five words:

[drinkypoo]

"We're" isn't a word at all.

Who told you that? You've been lied to like an Apple customer awaiting the arrival of a macbook with broken hinges.

Re: they like paying and we like being paid

[namekuseijin]

remember you're not the only one hiring people to work on "our" electrical system. If there's a problem, its worries are shared by many and the solution likely to come quicker.

Re:What's all about Vista

[evil_Tak]

So, I suggest that Vista will be the single biggest event in Linux desktop adoption.

People said that about XP before it was launched. Of course, GNU/Linux adoption did go up after XP's release, so maybe they were on to something...

Re:What's all about Vista

[dwandy]

People said that about XP before it was launched.

While XP 'required' you to register with ms.com, this could be (and was) hacked pretty quick.
Where I see the difference between XPs attempt at forcing the pirate to buy is that it remained uni-directional. In other words, if the OS was hacked and was told that everything was Ay-Oh-Kay! then the computer ran quite nicely, and totally beyond the control/reach of ms.com
Vista, on the otherhand (maybe more specifically Genuine Advantage, but I say Vista 'cause that's when it won't be optional in any way shape or form...) requires you to connect for updates. Not legit? no soup for you!

It's this mandatory registration that will make people move to something else. And yes some (maybe most?) will then buy a license, but there will be some who say f*sk them! and switch to something else, and for a lot of people, that something else is going to be Linux.

Oracle is actually pretty big on Linux

[PCM2]

This article is pretty frustrating, as it still gives no answers why Oracle is not a member of ODSL and why they should be? As far as I know Oracle makes database and middleware tools, wich is pretty distinct from operating system kernels. Maybe they require some specific kernel modules to get some better performance in some instances, but does that require them to be a memberof ODSL?

I talked to Wim Coekaerts the other day and he said that one of the things that frustrates him is the level to which Oracle is involved in Linux kernel development and promoting Linux in general, and yet they don't seem to get credit for it. Yes, Oracle is a database and applications vendor -- but Oracle is a pretty resource-intensive application, and a lot of people use it for some very heavy lifting, and as such it can demand a lot from the OS kernel it runs on. Oracle has put a lot of energy into making its database run better on Linux, and making Linux more stable in general.

For more info, check out the column I wrote about it -- Oracle: the biggest Linux vendor you've never heard of

Re:Oracle is actually pretty big on Linux

[iggymanz]

most of us don't sit up nights worrying why a bloated, overpriced, 1980's technology closed source software vendor isn't a bigger part of linux. In about two years, there will be no compelling reason to use Oracle as a dbms, as its ass gets kicked by a couple well designed dbms systems, and also by the toy Mysql at the low end

What is Oracle whining about?

[jwd-oh]

OSDL does not claim to be anything more than what is listed here:

http://www.osdl.org/about_osdl

wxWidgets is the best x-platform?

[ratboy666]

You said "try wxWidgets". I did.I summarize my results:

Windows: Ok results. Application built with a wxWidgets builder.

Move application to Linux x86. Result: horrible. Faults all over. Back to cleaning up source code. Turns out that dialog window objects are somehow ok to use, even after they are out of scope with MS VC. Debugging is nasty. When I finally got it running, it looked reasonable (GNOME, Redhat 9). 5 hours.

Move application to Solaris (Sparc) 8. A few problems left. Go back, figure out wxWidgets issues. But... the application looks TERRIBLE. Fonts don't fit, dialogs don't fit, complete disaster visually. Manually modify to make it acceptable. But, notice that some UI paradigms that the original designer used didn't work (eg. Grayed out text being VITAL -- on the SUN grayed out meant drawn with a pattern, not legible). Modify application to fix these things. 25 hours.

Notice that HELP features don't work across platforms -- fix it up. 25 hours.

Test on AIX and HPUX. 20 hours.

Total time preparing a "cross platform" wxWidgets application: 75 hours. But then, I *may* not know what I am doing.

YMMV

Ratboy.

Re:wxWidgets is the best x-platform?

[wysiwia]

You said "try wxWidgets". I did.I summarize my results:

Windows: Ok results. Application built with a wxWidgets builder.

Does this mean you built your own sample with RAD tool like wxDesigner or CodeBlocks? Then your test is more about RAD tools than wxWidgets. BTW why didn't you use wyoGuide-Demo as your starting code base?

wxWidgets on Linux is based on GTK+, therefore any wxWidgets should look equally nice as any other GTK+ application. If it doesn't you're doing something wrong. Yet I've suggested several times to wxWidgets developer to create a DirectFB (GTKDFB) port which would allow for much nicer Linux applications.

wxWidgets on Windows is based on Win32, therefore looks as nice as any MFC application and far better than any GTK+ application.

I don't know wxWidgets on Solaris (I've never tried it) but the developer capacity is rather limited. Complain to Sun if you aren't happy.

Total time preparing a "cross platform" wxWidgets application: 75 hours. But then, I *may* not know what I am doing.

Just compare once these 75 hours for 4 platforms with the one year Google needed to move GoogleEarth to Linux. Sure a full featured application may need a few hundred hours but then you're set up throughout the full development cycle.

O. Wyss

Re:What's all about Vista

[Vancorps]

Perfectly valid points and I think they only support my claim that Vista won't drive more people to Linux in greater numbers. I think the success of Linux depends on its continued development and increases usage. As more people use it the more they tell their friends and so on and so forth. It'll grow slow but its like any type of small business. You start out doing small amounts of business and as you grow you take on proportionally more and more.

I think Linux will only become more and more influential as time goes by, but I don't think the success of Vista will be influenced in and measureable way by Linux. I think Linux growth is purely momentum but people need to keep in mind that Microsoft also has a lot of momentum and their products are becoming more and more complete in the corporate world which will only make it harder for Linux. I think its the corporate world Microsoft wants to keep and anything else is just gravy.

Most of the corporate improvements they've made to their products don't really help the home user but of course a lot of things that help business do ultimately affect home users so in the end everyone will be more satisfied with Windows. This is to be expected though, people weren't satisfied with Oracle 7 which is why we have Oracle 10g now. Linux will continue to improve so for now its pick the right product for the platform, neither of them are perfect which is why email blasts are done using Debian and sendmail while calendaring and collaboration are done with Exchange/Sharepoint.

At any rate, I don't doubt that Windows will continue to be pirated in the future but Microsoft could be a lot more restrictive given the tools that they already have in place. The BSA are at least as bad as the RIAA/MPAA. In either case I find it a rare case that people go with Linux because its free. There are instances but usually its because it does what they need it to do and won't get bogged down trying to do other things like a Windows box can.

Re:What's all about Vista

[Vancorps]

The parent to my post replied with the answer to this. Today 1/3rd of new Windows machines are pirated. That means the majority of the growth is not pirated. There is nothing to reconcile, piracy in this day is not what it was back in 95. For whatever reason more people are buying. I don't know too many people switching to Linux because Windows is too expensive. The few times I've converted our servers to Linux its been because we didn't have a Windows license and it was easy to find a distribution fit for that function without a lot of effort.

That said, how many people pirated an upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP? I'll guesstimate not many. Most people leave the old operating system on the computer until the computer dies and then they buy a new one with the latest OS. That's why we still have so many 98/2k machines out there.

I'd argue that there isn't a ton of piracy except among technical circles which know that you can run alternate operating systems.

The Linux Desktop is here!

[cloricus]

Agreed.

The Linux 'brand' is now almost a household word and many none techie people are at least receptive of the suggestion of trying it out. Some of these people are even converting for good. Sure they aren't fanboi's, in fact most of them are over 45 in my expirence, though at least they are also showing their children their nice easy to use computer that 'Just Works'(tm). Also with the addition of wine and cedega support for WoW every day not-so-geeky types are also dipping their feet in the water and enjoying what they find (mostly with ubuntu or some with suse).

So in reality the Linux Desktop is here, it has been for over a year, and the people have been coming.

Re:The Linux Desktop is here!

[Scottux]

Linux is only losing out to Microsoft because of a) the console that somehow still needs to be used regularly and b) there are not many good games for Linux.

Re:What's all about Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

The #1 reason Microsoft is so popular is *not* because it was so heavily pirated. That logic simply doesn't make sense. It was pretty much the only thing available for inexpensive x86 hardware in the 90s unless you just happened to want to torture yourself by installing linux or running OS/2.

reason for Windows popularity?

[alizard]

It's installed by the vendor and the user buys it as part of the original purchase. Most home users aren't up to doing their own OS installs. By the time it's upgrade time, unless they've upgraded them, which means they're out of the "most" category, their machine is probably inadequate for the next-gen OS... and at this point, they've got a whole lot of legacy Windows software.