Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I also wonder, why isn't Apple or Microsoft in?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
No need to join because:
Oracle Still Diggs Linux
They're in competition with MySQL.
Isn't Linus a direct feedback line to the Linux community? Does it get any more direct?
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).
t s/2005-December/000349.html).
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_architec
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
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
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.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
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.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
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.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
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.
evil is as evil does
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.
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.
Seriously, more like PostgreSQL or FireBird.
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.
evil is as evil does
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.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
They also like the fact that there is a legal entity to sue if things go pear-shaped.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
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"
Rich
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.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
> 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!
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)
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.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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?
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).
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