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Oracle Wants Proof That Open Source Is Profitable
An anonymous reader writes "Since Oracle's acquisition of Sun, all open source projects that now have Oracle as their primary sponsor are worried about their future, and FUD is spreading quickly. Very few public statements have been made by Oracle executives, particularly regarding OpenSolaris. The community is arguing about the difficulties of forking the code base when most (if not all) of the developers are employed by Oracle. Now Oracle wants the community to prove that open source can be made profitable. What arguments can the Slashdot crowd provide to convince Oracle about that?"
Reader greg1104 tips related news about licenses for Solaris. According to an account manager, "Solaris support now comes through a contract on the hardware (Oracle SUN hardware)."
Based on Sun's financial demise I'm sure that Oracle is already aware that closed source software isn't always profitable either.
open source is inherently no more profitable than closed source...
they both CAN be profitable.
...who read Oprah instead of Oracle?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
IBM & Red Hat are profitable, right?
There is a war going on for your mind.
How about you sell more database licenses because your users don't have to spend part of their budget on OS licenses?
Redhat does pretty good for itself, doesn't it?
If it wasn't RedHat would have gone under years ago.
Just in case you think that Oracle does not understand that... then look what they are doing to database customers that run on sun gear... They are going to get their database support dropped, unless they have their Sun support active.
Seems like they know what they want and how to get it.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
I'm curious as to why a company would spend a lot of money making something that other people will give away for free.
It had better be really special.
My experience in software houses over the last 20 years suggests that they are opposed to letting customers see their source code because then customers will know, beyond any doubt, that they have been thoroughly fleeced. If the vendor delivers binaries only, at least there's still the possibility that the code is good quality, cleverly engineered, or whatever they're convincing people to pay for.
no exaggeration and no offense here. we are the community. users, developers, evangelists etc and so on. we just make a software/framework live by developing, adding to it, supporting and using it, or we leave it and it dies.
its not our job to make it profitable for you or teach you. you are the private company that seeks to profit. its your job to find ways to profit from it without offending us. think of us as 'the people', the public.
if you upset us, we will fork something and get behind it and it will take off.
Read radical news here
whether you get the *source code* or not has NOTHING TO DO WITH MONEY
You buy software. That software can come as binary, source code or both. The license that that software is sold to you with is what matters
Open source is not profitable, per se. If you require beancounters to add up direct income from the product itself, that's a non-starter. If you have a little more leeway and count service contracts, that's a little better.
By and large, though, open source benefits the community and not the captalist. It's simply too hard for accountants to add up all the indirect benefits to society, and then, also indirectly, to themselves. Having a solid code base that can be -- and is -- improved by thousands of eyes is akin to trying to ennumerate how Van Gogh failed to profit from his pretty pictures.
Fork the code base. While we still can.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
If they are looking for potentially equally profitable or just profitable. Even a 3rd grader could make a convincing case for the latter.
Don't fuck up where IBM is making money.
Sincerely,
Open Source
They only need to look towards Red Hat. If Oracle cannot figure it out, then they need to close their doors. It is not the open source arenas responsibility to make Oracle profitable. Now if Oracle wants to hire me at oh, I dunno $500,000 a year plus perks, then I will teach them, till then they have done nothing but issue a threat.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
I believe open source is a good model for software. I'd much rather buy software and services from someone who believes the same.
Larry knows exactly how to make money; he is probably the world's best businessman at holding you upside-down and shaking you vigorously until your pockets empty.
I would be stunned if Oracle ever comes out with a credible OpenSolaris strategy -- it's not Oracle's way, nor is it in their best interests to have a vibrant opensolaris community. Unlike Linux, the best parts of Solaris have never come from outside Sun. Dtrace, ZFS, integrated hardware, all this stuff is where Sun's real value lay.
The end game for OpenSolaris began when Sun moved ahead with the merger. From then until the official end is just drama, positioning, etc.
Open source by itself is not profitable. But services around it surely are.
I don't have to pay for it...
"(The following message is wholly my own, and doesn't represent anything from Oracle. While I'm an Oracle employee, I have no special privileged information or insight beyond what is already common knowledge.)"
This could be a random guy stirring the pot. What do we have to actually think management might ditch opensolaris?
RedHat, is a Linux corporate support company that was the first and so far as I know the only company that's making money doing that. Although, almost half of RedHat's income is from financial activities. In other words, they're not making all their money from FOSS.
So, there hasn't been a business model based upon FOSS that's really been proven - completely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, FUD blah blah blah. But just brushing off criticisms as FUD doesn't cut it to the accountants, I'm afraid.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Ok, so I'm the author of that message that is quoted in the article. And while an employee, I was *not* speaking for Oracle. I didn't use an Oracle e-mail account, or a Sun account for that matter.
I am not authorized to speak for Oracle. So please make sure attributions are correct.
Also, most of the posters here are confused due to lack of sufficient context. I was talking about Open Development (where anyone can integrate changes and participate in design, etc.) -- not Open Source. Open Source is clearly a win for everyone involved, I think. I'm personally less convinced that Open Development is a win for Open Solaris. There are lots of people using it, but almost nobody contributing, and the contributions are expensive to support.
Oh yeah, and in case anyone thinks I don't know what I'm talking about -- have a look at https://www.ohloh.net/p/opensolaris/contributors -- that would be my name at the top of list. And yes, I integrate changes for other people in the community as well, but those numbers are mostly not part of the ohloh statistics.
Oracle supports Linux - RHEL and Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL) are more or less the same, with the support contracts run through Oracle rather than the Red Hat folks. Works nice when the OS and the application are one company - eliminates finger pointing. The support for Linux is very strong and from what I understand, they are all in (much like IBM is).
I don't understand why Oracle would want to make that same sort of commitment to another OOS operating system, especially one that has such a little footprint. Heck, I'd be a bit worried about Solaris proper, much less the OOS variant, were there a better SPARC option on the Linux side.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
...just think of it as the America's Cup of software. It's about the competition and the pride...
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
Write open-source software that works with hardware or closed-source software you already sell. Build applications that run on Oracle databases. Sure, people will port them to run on other DBs, but you'll still get sales of your DB. Same for hardware.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that there are just about zero people on Slashdot who are able to and will freely outline for major corporations how to create a profitable business model.
Whale
It reads a little bit like: Prove that i will make profit while the parameters discussed make up only a samall percentage of the business.
The best argument i can bring forward: I bet my own money on Sun/Oracle doing so. We've just invested about 100.000 Euros into a software that requires OpenSolaris. If Sun/Oracle doesn't prosper, OpenSolaris will get axed and my own efforts & money will not pay off. I require Sun/Oracle to succeed. We're producing an appliance based on OpenSolaris and Sun Hardware. To make a profit ourselves, we have to sell about 20 installations. 20 installations would mean more than 100.000 Euros for Sun in Hardware and Service Contracts.
Sincerely yours, Martin
If the vendor delivers binaries only, at least there's still the possibility that the code is good quality, cleverly engineered, or whatever they're convincing people to pay for.
It's the hot dog perspective. If it tastes good, you don't need to know what's in it.
Reply to That ||
If they can't figure that out themselves, they are in the wrong business.
Scientia est Potentia
How about anything that Google does? The projects they work on give people better access to their ads, making them money.
Oracle has made no such statement. This was from Garrett D'Amore a Staff Engineer from Sun Micro Systems. He was opining about the future of Open Solaris.
Love how this gets attributed to Oracle.
Hey, numb nuts, Oracle has been giving away their db free for Linux for years.
Can slashdot employ and editor who can weed through this crap!
the OS that runs the app is somewhat important in that it needs to be secure and stable, but it is the application on top of the OS that sells, if Oracle can sell a complete solution - in this case a Linux distro with Oracle's database software on top and include service & support, maybe even include remote administration by authorized Oracle IT staff if that sells the product. (i knew SSH would come in handy someday)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It's really simple. If an open source project benefits Oracle's bottom line, it will have continued support. If it doesn't, then it won't get support.
The "greed is good" mantra comes into play here. Oracle's responsibility is to create revenue. If an open source project does not feed into that equation, it will not be supported. Oracle is not a charity nor any sort of non-profit corporation.
So, if Open Solaris doesn't actually make any money for Oracle, there's no reason to suggest that it will survive. Hopefully, though, if Oracle decides to drop support, it will do the right thing by passing the code to a true non-profit open source foundation, like the Apache Foundation. That would be a graceful way to get out of direct support for a project while still supporting the ideals of Free Software.
Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
...who basically use the code written for free by gullible kids. Yes, Red Hat is profitable. Feel free to name two other companies that make significant money on Open Source.
Out of the hundreds of companies I've been in contact with over the last decade, I know of one, small struggling company of 5 or so guys that makes it, barely, by configuring Plone (and excellent product, by the way). His wife runs a restaurant on the side. Some months she's more profitable than he is.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
It sounds like "Buy our products or we'll end the open source projects we're holding hostage.".
- shared software development costs
- value-added services based upon open source software
It's true!
1. Everything is profitable.
2. ???
3. Profit.
It is somewhat hard to pay the power bill and your employees with "benifits to society"
Open Source software is profitable in much the same way owning a parking lot for your business is profitable. It enables you to do business more cheaply and flexibly than the other options.
Open source software works great when it is not your core competency. For example, if you make hardware appliances, Linux is a great, free commodity OS you can use. Hiring some people to develop it, customize it, and fix bugs in it is much, much cheaper than writing an OS from scratch or licensing one. If you sell computing services, OSS is a great resource because it enables you to deliver those resources more cheaply and if you combine either of the two previous markets with custom hardware or software you do develop and which is your core competency, you can undercut pretty much every other business model.
I don't even know why I'm repeating this here. Literally hundreds of companies (I've worked for four myself) rely heavily on OSS development to make money and have been doing so for decades now. If the brilliant business minds at Oracle can't wrap their heads around this problem then they have bigger concerns than what to do with Sun's OSS assets... like how to fire all the idiots who somehow graduated from business school.
OSS is great way to cut your own costs by getting others to do work for you for free and make money in other markets.
So unless you can figure out how having OpenSolaris running on millions of devices everywhere ultimately translates to revenue, I doubt Oracle mgmt will be impressed.
Umm, does Oracle use OpenSolaris themselves for their workstations and servers both internally and for sale? If so, then having OpenSolaris on millions of devices means you get free bug reports and fixes for your OS from some subset of those millions of people. That's free labor.
If you don't monetize something somewhere, then it doesn't really help if OpenSolaris is used everywhere. In fact, it hurts. Because you spend more time supporting and debugging things that are not necessarily supportive of your own priorities, and are not generating revenue.
Wait you're spending time fixing bugs you don't care about and supporting the OS for free? Why? Why not just fix the bugs you do care about or which people are willing to pay you to fix and let other people handle the rest of the bugs if it bothers them? That's how Linux works, why not OpenSolaris?
Show us a plan for how that will ultimately generate revenue for Oracle?
Umm, you don't have to pay software licensing costs, you get bug reporting and work on the project from others for free, you can charge people support fees if they want you to do any work on it, if they don't want support it costs you nothing. How is this not a win? And what is your alternative? Pay Microsoft licensing fees? Drop OpenSolaris and switch to Linux then spend you money trying to port the features you need from OpenSolaris to Linux? Close source OpenSolaris and try to get people to pay you when they can just use Linux instead (or Windows or OS X)? Those are the three options I see and I'm sure your guys will do a thorough cost benefit on them all because they're not morons... right?
They're a business. It's up to them to figure out how to make money or otherwise benefit from a widget, whether it's FOSS or anything else. I hope they're clever enough to figure it out, you'd think they would've had an inkling of how to take advantage of those projects before acquiring Sun.
FUCK YOU!
Shhh... don't tell or there will be less for us.
Luv ya,
stick
I just had the experience of starting up my recently upgraded copy of openoffice on my linux box and seeing an oracle logo in the startup window. Feels kind of strange, like having your mom's underwear mixed in with your girlfriend's in the laundry basket.
I realize that TFA is about OpenSolaris, but when it comes to mysql and openoffice, it's always seemed to me that the only real reason those projects received so much attention over the last decade was that they got there first-est with the most-est. It's not like mysql is the only OSS database on the market, or the best technically. When it comes to openoffice, I'm getting kind of tired of having to apologize for it. It just isn't a very good office suite in terms of usability, quality, or features. And it's an infamously unhealthy OSS project in terms of the ugliness of the codebase and the lack of success in working with developers outside Sun/Oracle.
So maybe it's a good thing that Oracle bought Sun, because it will allow the OSS community to step back and reassess their focus. Competition is good. It's not healthy that the OSS world has drifted into a near-monoculture of mysql and openoffice.
Find free books.
If you a providing some type of common software that other software vendors provide, the it becomes extremely profitable. For instance, let's take a look at open office. Its compared frequently to Microsoft's office. Its open sourced and I would imagine it costs about 1/2 the amount it takes to develop MS Office. For Open Office, there is less SQA required as the community does this for you. You don't need to introduce or develop new features, just mimic known existing and liked features. There is no worries about getting alpha users to use a buggy product. No repercussions if the software doesn't work. Its open source and bound to be buggy at least at first.
The issue here, is that the software needs to be preexisting or have an existing analogue. If you have a unique piece of software, the start up costs, testing, and coding are too great for little or no return as the open license will allow anyone to use it. Mimicking closed software allows you have the functionality while someone else does the development.
Do all of you really think this is an official communique from Oracle regarding their policy with Open Source? This looks more like speculative hashing-outs that usually can be found on mailing lists, especially in a 'discuss' list, like this one. I sincerely doubt this mailing is more than one person's opinion.
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
I'd say Trolltech has managed to make a open-source technology (Qt) profitable. Be it by first making it not 100% completely free open-source (via QPL and later as a GPL-library), but eventually it is not free and by working with a large open source project (KDE), the momentum for using Qt has increased a lot. Without KDE, Qt wouldn't have been where it is now (and vice versa). It's about taking a large collection of open source code, and selling services/support on at least a part of it. If the added value for paying is high enough, companies will pay.
The problem here isn't that open source isn't profitable, it's that it isn't Oracle profitable. Oracle is the essential part of the problem here, and to answer directly is to miss the point.
We solve this not by huffing and wheezing about how great open source software is. We solve it by proving that we don't need closed source software, that giants like Oracle are unnecessary and useless. We solve it by using PostgreSQL and MySQL, by using Linux (and maybe Open Solaris). We solve it by publicly mocking anyone who spent the money on Oracle, finding security holes in Oracle, and generally making it unpleasant to be an Oracle customer, which won't be hard because of the great head start Oracle has on that.
We don't have to justify our existence or our way of doing business; they do. And they're doing a great job of pissing off their loyalists. IBM was once this proud. Look at them now. The same thing can happen here, we just have to refuse to put up with it.
I've seen the costs of Oracle's licensing. They don't want profit, they want a guaranteed user base - just like every other megacorp on the planet. The only way to guarantee a user base, even when you product is shi^H^H resource intensive, is to either distribute complementary kool-aid, or make sure the user base cannot switch to a competing product.
Oracle does not want profit, they want profit with a guarantee.
As far as opensolaris, mysql and the rest of Sun's opensource projects go, well that's just the way the cookie crumbles. When a corporate buyout happens, there are no guarantees about current products whether proprietary OR OSS. If a product doesn't fit a companie's vision they axe it.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
After all, isn't that what they are really saying. "Prove that my plantation will be more profitable if I use hired labor, rather than slave labor". Well, maybe it will or won't be, but that completely ignores the relevant issue at hand. Sure, he wants to make a profit, but so does everyone and their mother.
When one relies on a proprietary model instead of a free model, it is just another way of saying, "I assert the right to attack you if you copy things and it interferes with my goals". Maybe he won't be profitable, perhaps he can't survive or make as much money in a world where he can not restrict the freedom ans liberty of others. Perhaps the plantation masters couldn't either. So what. He owes it to me to respect my liberty to copy as I please, but neither I nor society owe him a goddam thing other than the same kind of respect.
“A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven.”
-Jean Chretien, Prime Minister of Canada
It's not profitable. Just drop it all and make closed source.
There are valid ways open source can fit into a business that's primarily closed source. Ask IBM. But if you don't "get" open source by now, I despair that you're ever going to get it... which suggests to me that it would be better to focus on what's made you profitable instead of trying to cover too much ground. Especially if you're in the position where your own open source can become your competition -- the common wisdom is to provide a superior support experience if you're delivering open source, but you don't want to find yourself outpaced by a smaller competitor in that regard AND lose your edge from your closed source software.
I actually was reminded of this when I went to grab the latest version of VirtualBox (closed source - i need the features that aren't in the OSE version), and noticed all the Sun logos were replaced with Oracle ones.
Not worried about the open-source version since you can't really kill it, but since there's practically no revenue from it I guess it'll be next on the Oracle chopping block...
Just ask companies like Intel: their contribution to OSS, primarily linux kernel work, helps make their hardware that much more sell-able, hence profitable.
I think of it the same way of ensuring future business. Look at Photoshop. Yes, piracy for it is bad, however once people start using it, they learn how to do it, will get jobs and then request the software when they need to do some image manipulation. So it does pay, but in an indirect way that is hard to track through a metric. Microsoft managed to beat the tar out of Corel when it provided free training for Office.
Actually, that is a horrible analogy. There are no slaves involved. In fact, it is a question of whether Oracle continues to pay "hired labor" to develop and maintain something that may not be generating any profit and may be actually losing money.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
It is indeed. Companies that support open source projects make money in other venues, often supported at their base by the very non-profit open source that they support.
Other companies buy up projects to kill them. After all, it's also hard to pay employees for your very expensive database when a more-or-less free one does a more-or-less good job.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
Poor-quality code is less likely to work and meet your needs when the quality affects the cost and the reliability of the product. If the code is inefficient, you need to buy more hardware and more copies of the product. If the code has significant defects, the defects could compromise availability, consistency, and durability of the data that the product maintains.
Isn't widely accepted that Microsoft and Sony lose money on every Playstation and XBox console that's sold? Yet they make their money back on licensing SDKs and games. Lots of retail stores sell certain items at or below cost -- just to get customers "in-the-door" so they can sell them more profitable items.
Just like the "Enabler" commenter stated, FOSS can be a gateway drug to profitability through other means.
Saying that there's no way FOSS can be profitable seems like an excuse for some other underlying reason why they don't want to support it.
When Ellison was in New Zealand competing for the America's Cup several years ago, he so endeared himself to the Kiwis with his arrogant, abrasive personality, that the locals quipped that "Oracle" stood for "One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison". Classic!
They made quite a nice profit.
Hope is the currency of fools
Oracle, the next big target after Unix, that Open Source will destroy, is your bloated, 1980s technology DBMS.
Open Source will be very, very unprofitable for you.
Die. Badly.
Wherever your product fits on the software stack you want open APIs and open source at the place below you in the software stack. You don't make profit from open source. You make profit from building stuff on top of open source.
One example would be IBM which sells services and hardware on top of open source.
Red Hat is profitable by selling services and support on top of open source.
Another example would be Google and their Chromium project. An open source browser is a gateway to their profit engine which is selling advertisements through their search engine and web apps.
How about them asking IBM? They are doing very well with open source. Red Hat too.
Oracle, are you really saying that your arch-rival can do it, but you can’t?
It’s not Open Source’s failure if you can’t make money with it. It’s your fault.
In particular your outdated concepts of software as a good and as a product.
Software is the result of a service.
If you always remember that single little truth, then you business models will work. (As long as your service is worth the money.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Companies that support open source projects make money in other venues, often supported at their base by the very non-profit open source that they support.
I can see how one could sell support contracts for certain kinds of software like MySQL and Solaris. But not all categories of free software are as amenable to support contracts. Examples include computer games that aren't massively multiplayer.
Other companies buy up projects to kill them.
Oracle may be planning to do this to MySQL, which was largely developed within the MySQL AB cathedral that Oracle acquired. On the other hand, PostgreSQL's major contributors are too diverse in organizational affiliation for this to be an easy job for Oracle.
You're selling hardware, you're selling a high-end closed source database. Why bother annoying the customers by also charging for OS and runtime stuff that's pretty much a commodity?
Having a FOSS program takes away revenues from the competition. Hence, they will have less money for R&D, marketing and other business activities to compete in the market place making you stronger and more profitable!
I've always been under the impression that Open Source made profit from Support and Certifications. Unless they are completely free and then they make money off the donations from the public like a monk. I could be wrong but I don't really know of any other ways to make money with Open Source. Support always sounds like a protection racket though and certifications like a con.
I have PMS and a gun... Questions?
That's like asking if software is profitable? Not without a business pan. For some it is, and some it is not.
What's next? Hey, is selling ice cream profitable?
1) Open Source is mainly a replacement of "built in house/customized software" than packaged software. You are approaching people who want full control rather than a generalized solution.
2) By returning the changes to the community, they can ensure other improvements done can be implemented cheaply in the future.
3) Other people and organizations may find that the new base is a start point for their organization too, and use it with or without modifications.
These steps are valuable for consultants, companies who want control and save money, etc. However, when a project grows quickly or is of a kind that is critical many people would desire someone to ensure them that next time they upgrade their solution it does not cause problems, or can be quickly resolved by someone, or someone who are liable to fix the issues should they occur in their system, then it might go to a new level for the maintainers:
4) The real money for a development company will not be there until sufficient amount of people or organizations want to pay for support.
Face it - Open Source is about mass customization. It is also about making the common a commodity - do not expect to sell things that are common needs for everyone for a massive price forever (word-processors, base operating systems, etc), The money will only come from supporting these application when the base is big enough.
Assuming you can sell your software to enough companies, you might not be interested in Open Sourcing it out - a large part of it all is weather you believe you will gain more on support by obtaining a larger number of users, or if you think the selling to and supporting less people bring more value.
So much for nine years of my resume ... time to read up on that "Leengux" rubbish the kids are on about so much these days. This is Unix, I know this! That, on the other hand ...
http://rocknerd.co.uk
http://www.redhat.com/
...if the web sites for OpenSolaris, OpenOffice, VirtualBox, and other Oracle-supported projects had links pointing to things that Oracle sells they might generate revenue.
Oracle has a unique business model for being one of the two biggest software companies in the world -- you can download most of their core products easily and try them out at no cost. Some of the products are flat out free (JDeveloper, Oracle SQL Developer). When you license them, it's not because they are limpware, that they are expired, or need a serial number... because they don't. The incentive is primarily for purchase of security updates and support. This is completely Unlike the other big software company, which doesn't allow downloads, no try before you buy, have to use serial numbers, restrict upgrade paths, and install phone-home services to keep them aware of who is running legit copies of their software and who isn't.
The thing is, this topic seems to be more about what to do with Solaris. Oracle used to use Solaris as their tier 1 development platform in the 90's, then turned to Linux years ago. Now that they're in deep with both, which open source *nix OS do they focus on? Is there any value in Solaris over Linux? They know that Linux is both open source and is profitable (Red Hat). Oracle knows there is money in open source software or they wouldn't have purchased MySQL properties, attempted to purchase JBoss, even thrown around talks with a Red Hat acquisitionetc. This may be more about trying to figure out how to focus so they can supply turn-key servers to their customers rather than general "is oss profitable."
At this point what's to tell Oracle that Solaris is better than Linux, because, I'm not sure they're convinced?
That might be true also with closed software, per se. Are beancounters successful in convincing anybody that, say, web browsers are a non-starter?
One that hath name thou can not otter
Open source isn't about profit, it's about savings! You don't have to create every bit of code, or licence it with high price, when programs are open sourced.
You can make your living though, by selling support, customization and integration services.
Oracle ask's they need a proof is Open Source profitable. Yes it really is! Well, maybe not profitable for Oracle but for millions of other businesses out there!
Really a stupid question for Oracle. All they think is "me,me,me,me,me" never they seem to come to think of "total efficiency in system" or total net profit outside their business. Wel, who blames those silly stupid capitalists...
for solaris i dont know. since there is linux, freebsd, openbsd, and what not, i dont see how they can turn solaris into a cash cow.
mysql might be good for them though. since its opensource they cannot kill it. maintaining it well and making their propietary db solution a perfect upgade path seems the best way to "make money" off it.
i dont know if they still house a lot of OOo devs. i never saw how OOo was making sun money. if its worth something then hopefully IBM wants to throw money at it; if they are serious with their lotusnotes+OOo thing, and dare to play it hard with MS... :)
java though, sounds like a good project to keep. i guess many of the big enterprisey stuff, that oracle makes money off, runs on java. i also expect a cool next-gen distributed db product that makes heavy use of java.
just my take on it.
MYSQL saves us a ton of money.
This program was made possible by a grant from the Ultra-Humanite, and viewers like you.
If they are open source (and GPL licensed), the worse that could happen is they cease to code for it and turn the rest of the developers to other projects. The open source portion could then be forked and taken over by others who see the value Oracle missed. Obviously it presumes GPLd code which isn't probably the case here.
Unfortunately, that will be a big bleed for those projects because, when under Sun, there were people hired, paid and on payroll (with benefits and all the nine yards) for working on those projects (which they did full-time and more.)
The possibility of losing that kind of man-hour man power is a biggie for an open source project.
that Oracle won't come to a grinding halt on a simple query.
Oh, and people in hell want ice water.
Someone hates these cans.
Oracle, go build your own business plan.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
Not all the OSS that Sun created was enterprise/server side software. I am curious as to what will happen to Open Office and NetBeans. Both are open source, and I would be surprised if anyone pays for support for either of them. Ergo, there is a lot of money going into developing them and no monetary return back to Oracle. Given the question in the original post, it makes me wonder if these two products are not long for this world. The only caveat is that if Oracle used Open Office rather than MS Office, the cost to maintain and improve on OO might be balanced by not having to pay out to MS. But Oracle may still not want to run their business using OO (depends on their needs, and whether OO can fulfill them all).
I think the greatest benefit from OSS is that it provides a creative outlet for programmers. Right now, we see a lot of 'programming' in server side Java using frameworks. This means that there is little creativity or novel solutions to programming in the enterprise. Everyone uses the same code everywhere, and the only things that really are different is each specific company's business logic. And often, even these differences can be minimal. For example, most billing systems operate the same way, from web stores to phone companies. And within markets, the differences can be even more minimal. e.g. Most telecom companies operate the same way using the same switches, usage, accounts, subscriptions, etc. i.e. the same basic business requirements. The only difference being in the idiosyncratic ways they do business. So programming is pretty stagnant on the business front.
OSS allows programmers an outlet to try to solve problems in new ways. Or to find new problems to solve. From this we get a cook pot of new ideas that both OSS and 'for profit' companies can riff off of to come up with new products or solutions to things we didn't know we needed yet. :) In this respect, I think OSS is very, very valuable. Unfortunately, bean counters and stock analysts will pressure companies like Oracle to get rid of these esoteric programs since they don't turn an immediate profit. The down side to capitalism seems to be the same as the downside to socialism: when driven to the extreme, creativity takes a back seat to the whatever the priority of the dogma is on any given day.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Oracle's bread and butter is data storage management, consulting, and services. Small fry (independent developers, small businesses) cannot afford these services. Medium to Big business and government agencies cannot afford NOT to have these services. Open source solutions provide a way for small businesses to grow into big businesses. I can also envision an argument centered around limiting revenue to competitors as a result of maintaining state of the art OSS...In effect it could be thought of as an anti-competitive strategy. It would therefore be in Oracle's best long term interest to maintain OSS products and provide a gateway to their own services in a structured manner which includes support. Secondly, the talent pool available to tech companies is kept consistently high and is of excellent quality due to the availability of OSS. Before the rise of OSS it was common to reverse engineer applications from native code (anyone remember coding in assembly?) and as a result there were fewer programmers with state of the art knowledge. There are numerous arguments possible here.
Those damn accountants are making money with open source!! But, are they respecting the license agreement? (See: Immortal Soul Clause, pg. 71)
It would be great if they could just see the future, and know whether open source would be profitable for them. Too bad there aren't any oracles around anymore.
> Reader greg1104 tips related news about licenses for Solaris. According to an
> account manager, "Solaris support now comes through a contract on the
> hardware (Oracle SUN hardware)."
SunOS/Solaris and support has ALWAYS been free with support on your hardware.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Why the hell did you make a Linux distribution (Oracle Enterprise Linux), buy MySQL and a company that developed Open Source software such as Java and OpenSolaris, if you didn't think Open Source was profitable?
This is just a scam 'see don't be mad at us, we wanted to work with the OSS community but it couldn't be shown that we could make money so we had to discontinue all of SUN's projects we didn't want to gut, err incorporate'
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But they didn't by the database that more or less does the job. They didn't buy PostgreSQL. They bought the database that doesn't even come close to doing the job, so stop making the argument that this has anything to do with Oracle killing MySQL. They don't compete with each other on any level. No one who knows anything about the subject matter would be so retarded as to even imply such a thing.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
..you got it. The value (primarily) in open source is using it in *another* business.
I have an analogy I use:
Home Depot (which would be the software only company) makes a lot of money selling tools and stuff, the materials used to do..things, a lot of different things. It's a good business but the market is limited to how many of these sorts of businesses can really exist. Now just one more step away, the amount made using the tools and stuff that comes from home depot dwarfs it. All the other businesses use Home Depot's stuff as an economic force multiplier. A simple carpentry job say requires X value lumber from Home Depot. Home Depot makes Y profit from that X, and it isn't all that much, much less than X. But, the carpenter, by doing value added work done with that lumber, probably makes 10x or better profit, at only 1X cost to him for what he bought at Home Depot.
If every business out there wanted to be just another Home Depot, it wouldn't work. Same with "software-only" as a stand alone business. The industry can support some, but not everyone can be in the software selling exclusively business, but USING the software is some unrelated business..that's where a lot more can be made. Yellow pages, A to Z, hundreds of thousands of businesses use software now, and can be profitable doing what they do. Open source and sharing helps drop the cost of X for all these other businesses, and savvy managers would realize it pays in the long run to share and share alike, as they get better tools to use in their unrelated business, meaning, they can help fund it a little by using their own devs or at least being good testers and users and contributing back what they can upstream.
That's why you shouldn't settle down and get engaged for a lifetime with a mortgage and children.
What happens to your ambitions, your beliefs? They all get crushed by the need to get shitloads of money at the end of the month.
Your job is not your life. (At least ideally.)
I know plenty of people who don't define themselves by what they do 9-5.
Beancounters have been dealing with this sort of thing longer than solid state computers existed (I'm not going to count the abacus for what should be obvious reasons ;). They have methods to account for indirect income, all you have to do is provide them justification for it.
If you can't provide justification, then it really isn't worth the companies time.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
2. Why should Open Source projects be profitable? Profits are a byproduct for Open Source projects - and an indirect one at best. It's not why the Open Source / Free Software movements were started. Open Source is about freedom, is about avoiding vendor lock-in, is about scratching itches. Go read the Cathedral and the Bazaar. (nothing against profits by the way. They have their place.) If this is not enough for Oracle, I say they cut the Open Source projects loose. If OpenSolaris and the others really have a community behind them, they'll manage. Linus started from scratch; Stallman started from scratch. They have a lot more than that. If the community support is not there, it's not a worthy project anyway. And if it proves to be impossible to fork, well, sorry, but serves them right for not using a GPL license anyway. Go away, Oracle. Stop distracting us.
I realize Poe's Law addresses fundamentalists -- roughly stated, "It is impossible to distinguish between sincere Fundamentalists and Parody of them" but we need a more general law of that special case to describe your post.
You should forgo roots, stability and long-term relationships -- i.e. your life -- to further your company's aims -- aka your career ambitions.
The sad thing is I can't tell if this is tongue-in-cheek or not.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
If they have any doubt, they should just spin off MySQL, Java, and OpenSolaris. I'm sure no one here would object if IBM, RedHat, or Novell were to scoop them up!
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Last year when the Oracle's contract had not been finalized, we chose PostgreSQL over MySQL and this kinds of doubts that Oracle will be proper place for projects like MySQL was one of the reasons. It seems Oracle has indeed problem adapting the new approaches required for working on Free Software projects.
Be like shadow in the light or darkness.KMZ
Look at Digium and Asterisk....
A guy trying to open a Linux Support Company found out that PBX (Phone Systems) were prohibitably expensive, so he went out and wrote one for his small company, open sourced it so anyone else could benefit and/or help with it. It was so good that he changed the business and is doing great supporting Asterisk PBX, selling hardware for it and now selling a closed license for business that require or want it with that type of license.
There you have it, Open Source at its best!
Apple WebKit is used by all of Apple's competitors except Microsoft, yet Apple still has the best out-of-the-box Web browsing experience, which only gets better as HTML5 continues to grow in Web development. WebKit enabled Apple to bring desktop browsing to phones in 2007 because it's so fast that it was acceptable even on an ARM 400MHz with 128MB of RAM. It's used throughout their native apps, too, for example in iTunes.
The thing is, Apple profited indirectly. WebKit improved the environment and Apple flourished in that environment to such a degree that the price of developing WebKit was amortized. It's hard for an MBA to understand such public-minded thinking.
How will FOSS Make Oracle Money? 1) Close ZFS, but leave it useable for OpenSolaris with optional Subscription or paid future improvements 2) Utilize and Maximize use of vm Technologies and offer a propriety, but corporately supported option 4) Implement Linux from within the company to lower TCO 5) Improve StarOffice and sell patching and compatibility updates, but offer security updates free And continue to use OpenOffice to figure out which features are being used, and how to improve. 6) Build a Training and Educational environment to tech users how to use your core products along with the open source products in order to send a knock punch to the Borg (Billy Boy) 7) Relicense Java, with a BSD-Like license and make it relevent again, or drop it completely. 8) Add Kernel modules for improved performance of the proprietary Oracle Database. 10) Profit.
"Just ask RedHat!"
If I was Larry I would axe OpenSolaris pure and simple, keeping Solaris. Then I would license the interesting bits as GPLv2 to be added to the Linux kernel so it could be used on OEL. I would keep OpenOffice.org as OSS just to piss off Microsoft and save on licenses. I would also keep VirtualBox as OSS. I would nerf MySQL. I would axe the C/C++ Sun compiler development and use GCC instead.
Oh and axe SPARC CPU development. Buy some software emulator company so my former ex-SPARC on Solaris clients would have a migration path to X86/Solaris.
They want evidence that a business model will be profitable before they go out and do it? What kind of a stupid idea is that? This is software! This is the Web! We don't do that kind of crap around here!
CG Pin-Ups?
Given their company's operating philosophies, they already have a modus operandi for open source.
btrfs exemplifies it the best. They need the state of filesystems to advance. They know they have little to no hope of turning a profit on a filesystem, especially not without compromising a goal of having it get enough credibility to be ubiquitous. They also don't want to invest a lot of resources to do it, but also see a very eager and capable community ready to go with just a catalyst of steering and technical contribution required. So they invest just a bit in development and hosting, and reap the rewards of a near certain chance of displacing ext2/ext3/ext4 with something providing the capabilities they want to leverage in other efforts to make money. There are other business models that work well with open source, but this is Oracle's, and they make it work for Oracle.
MySQL is a political grenade to have landed on their lap. Whatever 'damage' MySQL had done to Oracle has been done that cannot be undone. On the other hand, doubts of MySQL's future drive the community to the PostgreSQL half and reduce fragmentation and consolidate behind a project with zero vested interest in self-limiting to protect Oracle's bottom line. Oracle may have been able to salvage MySQL, but their positioning is seemingly so dubious that everyone can't help but to imagine the sort of internal struggle over that and what bad things it means for MySQL.
OpenSolaris is simply not going to go anywhere of value for them. Sun had years of that effort to try and displace some linux mindshare and cultivate a community, but came up relatively dry. Sun's thrashing about with their Solaris platform seemed to do about the same thing as thrashing about in quicksand did, it simply muddied the issues and sent a non-trivial amount of Solaris marketshare to AIX. Solaris, AIX, HP-UX all cater to a certain sensibility, and only AIX seems to have retained that sensibility. It's not a significant growth market by any means, but it is profitable and well worth milking while it persists. Oracle is positioned to handle this well, but without credibility I doubt it will pan out (think the Oracle acquisition actually sent *more* to AIX). They can try to treat Solaris as it was before and accept the revenue as IBM accepts the AIX revenue, at the same time participating in the Linux half of the coin in an entirely different manner. Perhaps even encourage some ZFS experience to officially look at btrfs. I would have said license ZFS GPL, but I think btrfs has some fundamental architectural advantages over ZFS approach now that make ZFS less appealing as a base to start from.
Java I think easily falls into the btrfs category. There would be no reason for Oracle to reneg on the community direction of Java and everything to lose if it slips into irrelevance because .NET captures the market on Microsoft and Python and the like capture much of the rest of the world.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It's a strategy that makes open source profitable. Either you sell support, or you sell a value added proprietary version.
Sure, standard FOSS licences like GPL and BSD make this hard, but there are others that make it feasible to charge for software that is entirely source-available, freely-re-distributable, and freely-forkable.
This is a very hard argument for numerous companies, not just Oracle. If the answer was simple, then Linux on the desktop would be much more prevalent. Instead we see it hidden away in the Server rooms happily consuming Microsoft's market share.
Profit models are always based on software sales with a percentage cap. As an example, a CAD support company will sell you AutoCad. They pay $400 US to Autodesk, and charge the customer $600 US. Sure, many companies offer support, but in the application space it's not easy to make money. How hard is it for a Windows power user to install a Windows application on their own? In reality, it's not difficult so most companies have minimum installation support. They can count on each year receiving a check for the latest version of AutoCad. Even if the company pays for installation service one year, there is no assurance that the customer will pay again for the services.
Some companies have "Managed Service Models", where you don't have to pay the 600 bucks for AutoCad. Instead you lease the seat with support for a fixed rate. This is closer to where you want to go since it covers both guaranteed software sales, and guaranteed support staff payments. Even still, these are pretty limited since most companies can not see much benefit in paying a company a large monthly rate for something one of their power users can handle. You also run into numerous issues where power users convince the people they work for (and rightly so) that it's a waste of money to use the managed service model. This could increase their pay, and add stability to their job (pretty important in this economy).
Where companies like IBM and RedHat make their money from OSS is a much lower level of Managed Services. When you can package the app, package the OS, security, patching, infrastructure to support everything, and have a knowledge base able to reduce down time companies see much more benefit. They can also cater lower cost services to companies with lower budgets. It's cheaper to get a start up moving with RedHat Cluster, Apache and MySql than it is an equivalent Oracle package. IBM and RedHat can not only show you the benefit, but will help you implement it.
This is where Oracle needs a different mind set, which I doubt will happen. Oracle does Oracle. They don't want to support SunOne, MySQL, or Netscape Products. They want customers to pay for Oracle Directory Server, not get SunOne for free. They want customers to pay for Oracle DB, not use MySQL. They want customers to use Oracle Web server, not the SunOne products or other proven free software.
The big bucks revenue that Oracle receives each year from contracts like Oracle Apps, Oracle DB, Oracle Identity Manager, etc.. comes from huge players with tons of cash to spend. Small companies don't have the budgets to pay for Oracle, and Oracle has traditionally had an attitude where they don't want to deal with small budgets. I have seen Oracle Sales reps laugh at customers with small budgets, or just completely blow them off and ignore them.
As long as Oracle has the mind set that they should make a mint off of every deal, there is nothing anyone can do to show them OSS is profitable. Profit to them is a relative term.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Oracle wants to determine the value of OpenSolaris? Let them drop it completely within one year. They should be able to determine the value within three years. It's really the only way to be sure.
Ouch! The truth hurts!
Consider how msft works. One msft product makes it necessary, or at least expedient, to get another msft product. To run the latest ms-office, you need ms-windows. To get all the features out of Outlook, you have to have Exchange. You can load certain websites without msie, which means you need windows. Why do you think msft is desperate to lock everybody into OOXML? Msft has always followed the strategy: "control the standard, and the money will follow."
Stop important F/OSS projects, and you hurt F/OSS. Maybe more people will use windows-server, and maybe ms-sql will run better on windows-server than oracle.
Why do you think Google and IBM support F/OSS so strongly? It's a standard than can, to some extent, keep Microsoft from having an even stronger monopoly.
Uncle Larry's going full steam ahead. I'm confident the offers to Sun's free software wizards goes something like: "Row or swim. Choose now."
He's got to turn Sun into a huge cash engine if he's going to build on his buy and acquire the rest of a server, storage, network and software vertical operation to take on HP and Cisco in the IT world war for ownership of the datacenter.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Not so, at least not if you are Goldman Sachs.
It seems from the question that for Oracle, at this point in time, the "open sourceness" of software is a tactical issue rather than a strategic one.
There are quite a few tactical arguments as to how value can be derived from the stuff that they open source but it is in the strategic level that it gets interesting. Does the commoditization of certain parts of the business software stack benefit oracle and/or hurt it's competition or not? If so, isn't driving that technology "good leverage"? is a larger number of developers/integrators exposed to oracle's products better for oracle than a small "certified" elite? Is access to a larger market of smaller companies something desirable for oracle? Are the current or potential customers turning towards open source? Will they? Will Oracle's competition eventually end up integrating their current offerings while locking Oracle out (example: Exchange Communications Server + Dynamics + SharePoint)?
Tactically, as others have pointed out selling support and services for the full solaris stack (plus directory, communications, remote access, virtualization, etc) may be profitable. There is tons of extremely cool and useful technology at sun, a well run services division should be able to turn a profit from it.
And for $DEITY's sake, don't end up closing java if you don't want a huge amount of blowback.
moi
will be greatly welcomed by all inhabitants of Planet Earth.
Let us pray for the great day to rise.
I'm not going to "convince" Oracle of anything. If they don't like Open Source, they can do whatever the hell they feel like.
FOSS existed long before Oracle and will continue to exist long after all the Oracle users are wondering how they managed to get boned so hard on licence fees from a company that then went broke.
This rates a big shiny "Who cares?"
It would be the same for a closed source project. Or do you think that somehow closed source people do not need to get payed? ANY project would suffer if you take away things it had before.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
We have come full circle haven't we? From commercial business adopting open source for their profits to open source having to prove it can actually provide profits. Should open source be profitable? Richard Stallman thought it would change the world, Linus Torvalds thought it was fun to do Eric Raymond thought it would lead to better software. But real cash in their pocket profit: No! If you think open source is there to provide you profit: Get out. We will sadly miss MySQL, Open Solaris and Berkeley DB. We will also sadly miss all those paid hands contributing to those products. But although I won't speak for everyone it is save to say that nobody will spend their energy, creativity and spare time just for your bottom line. While you exclusively reap the benefits, the concern should be yours, exclusively, as well.
If you created or maintained open source projects in the past because you thought there was a way to make money and it doesn't: Be a business, cut your losses and move on. It is not as if any other contributors need a better reason. If Linus one day decides he had enough. We might be sad, tears may flow. It might even kill the Linux kernel, still. Even then there is nothing more to say: It was fun while it lasted.
Don't get me wrong. Open source could provide you with profit. Even if you can't figure out how. Other companies apperently can. And for that: more power to them. If they contribute in turn, even more power to them. They are however contributors at most, just like the guy spending another lonely night in the attic translating the online help in Armenian. They might not have the same reason to contribute. They have their own reason to contribute. Apparenlty that is what motivates them.
I do understand communities of contributors and users these open source projects will me sad, disappointed and/or bloody furious. They do however have a choice: fork the project, knive the project or put it in the fridge and hope something else will grow on top. They have however no right to expect anyone will foot their community apart from them. Communites survive by the effort of their members and if that is not enough they will dissappear. People might be motivated by nostaligia to keep some alive. That might however not do much for the progress of the project.
There should not be any expectation that open source projects cannot die. I have closets full of code for commercial products that no longer exist. Open Source projects aren't any different. If the motivation is gone, monetary or otherwise, the projects will follow suit. So to you as to all former contributors: "So long and thanks for all the code."
P.S. Open Source provides some great development tools. You might want to look into that.
Regards, Ratl
For desktops? Yes, maybe.
For servers? Good enough.
Solaris does not have a few "neat features", it has major benefits that you can appreciate fully unless you are using them.
ZFS, dtrace, containers, service management system (instead of init scripts), role based administration (by which you can be far more granular about user privileges) and so on and so forth.
Linux, Windows and OSX can only dream about having all that.
That much is obvious if you RTFA and then visit the OpenSolaris mailing list.
So what would be better for Oracle: to have their own cutting edge, community supported and/or tested, widely spread Operating System? Or have to use Windows? Or have to work with Linux anyway?
The place where Solaris is from a technical point of view is ideal for the kind of procuts that Oracle makes.
We, the public, would try and test this software and even contribute fixes, without costing Oracle much (somewhere in that thread somebody mentioned that hosting the binaries and allowing downloads costs money. Use BitTorrent for bunnies sakes).
OpenSolaris is the best insurance Oracle could possibly have to keep full control of a vertical offering, it is also the stick that will keep Microsoft honest.
How can Oracle be so stupid as to have missed the obvious: RedHat?
Another large company stifling innovation, the way of corporate America. Buy up everything and shut it down and charge large fees to use. As a developer, I refuse to pay large sums for software systems that are closed systems. Companies are naive in their beliefs that closed source is better, I have never had to call support on open source, always been able to deal with the issue(s). It is always better to have source access, without it one becomes embroiled in the nameless faceless machine and it's bureaucracy. Buying Sun, along with it's acquisitions (MySQL in particular) is just a way of controlling the market and stifling growth in the name of profits. It is large companies like Oracle, that are stuck in the dark ages, control stifles innovation with the product they consume. Well Oracle will have it's day. Don't know about other developers, but I use NOTHING but open source, and that is what I promote, seems I do a little bit of advertising as well. Large companies cannot address software issues in a timely manner, their development process is encumbered with internal bureaucracy, and is slow moving. Linux is an example of a successful endeavor, and development path, and efficiently dealing with software issues. To add to that, large commercial affiliations are profiting off of it (RedHat), via the support path.
simple: its got what plants crave.
Oracle needs to quit being stupid. that is the highly academic argument they need to wrap their heads around, once they pull them out of their asses of course. Business and profit can be blinding in the wrong hands.
Actually, we are all wrong open sourcers. Interoperability is in fact a bad thing, academic progression is also bad. We should burn all the books because sometimes some people contribute to them who do not had PhDs in authorship or literature. We should also consider ethnic cleansing, and religious holy war.
I read your post, but before I did, I was getting the impression here after reading many other posts beforehand that Oracle's in an attempt to become "The NEW IBM!" really... that was in my head, & you're the first (or highest rated rather) post that had the word IBM in it, so... yea, I'll agree - they seem to be using Open SORES, lol, as a way of getting monies here too.
APK
P.S.=> Nothing wrong with that, especially if (& they have) IBM adds value to LINUX itself I say... they've always had decent coding done there pretty much @ IBM too, so how far wrong can you go... & so, if they make some coins from it, I say "Good!", nothing wrong with that! apk
Kid, I think you and I have different definitions of "long-term." :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
With his attitude, he's a genetic dead end.
Deleted
If IBM stopped all of their FOSS activities, it would have very little effect on their bottom line - if any. It seems to be more of an alternative to Windows - if anything.
"My enemy's enemy is my friend."
I can't even guess at the ongoing losses IBM costs Microsoft in lost Exchange and Outlook licenses by letting a handful of developers (one?) work on Postfix.
They're taking hundreds of millions of dollars (more?) away from their competitor for nearly nothing.
Postfix may not directly make IBM any money, but it sure as hell costs Microsoft big-time and gets customers to consider other solutions. Once you've made businesses realize that excellent non-Microsoft software exists, they start to consider other options. Maybe DB2 instead of SQL Server. Who knows? The possibilities are endless and the ROI is nearly infinite. Terry
1) RedHat?
2) IBM?
3) Lot of software companies which main product is open source, but support/training costs money?
It's not matter is your software open source or not, it is how well it blends with other products and how it gives additional sale points. For example, there is Zabbix, very promising web based GPL licensed monitoring system. Company who develop earns their money trough support contracts and training, and while I don't have clear information if they're in black, I know lot of enterprise entities who have bought support, because, yeah, product is that good.
RedHat - again, contracts, support, training. IBM - services, open source as tool to provide solution for customers.
In Oracle scenario - vertical platform with database, hardware and OS. All kind of databases. I actually try to see their problem. Ahh, they used to sell overblown and expensive database once, get fat check for support when customer gets intro trouble twice, and upgrades...sweeeet. Not.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Now im not trying to be a smart-alec however. Apple has already proven this. If you want to be profitable with OpenSolaris you have to be there at the start. Offer OpenSolaris in the school systems. As an open source software I am sure many collages and, even some high schools would be happy to offer courses in Solaris and OpenSolaris administration. Most students come out with only a basic understanding of the Linux operationing system, Then go on to get jobs using microsoft products because that is what they know and understand. Microsoft floods collages with there software and offers reduced cost of there operating systems to students. OpenSolaris is already there with no cost to the student. I have looked at what most colleges offer in terms of classes. I have seen a 0 classes on Solaris, OpenSolaris, mysql, Oracle, and mostly nothing on open source software with the exception of 2-4 semesters worth of linux which you can pick up a book and get about the same knowlage. You have alot of talented people comming out of design school they get hired and there employer buys them an apple because that is what they know how to use. Being that there is currnetly no cost for OpenSolaris flood the schools with it. Same for Mysql. With the demand for Network admins on a slight decrease and the demand for Database admin slowly on the rise. If oracle were to flood education system with Solaris-like knowelage, they would see return on there investment in the form of more students with advance to expert knowleage of the oracle, mysql, databases as well as Solaris and OpenSolaris not only knowelage but suggestions for there new employer to take. With an opensourse community doing alot of the develpment you have a good amount of heavy lifting taken care of. When faced with a problem the first thing you should do is think back to the first rule of business: Make your weaknesses, your strength. Well I hope you take my advice and, I hope it works out for you. I would hate to see all the great work that Sun has done lost to the world because we as an opensource community could not come together and solve a minor problem. -Goodluck to Oracle whichever way you turn.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=RHT&annual
$78M > 0
QED ?
They are making it already, They are selling a lot application servers, most of Oracle Databases that they sell is to be connected using JDBC, even that crap developing suite that they have is open-source based and they are making money with that either, in other worlds... Most of profit that Oracle is having in the last years is due the Java and not just because they have one very good RDBMS, because most of Oracle products are Java based. So what they want now? What I'm seeing is that they simple don't want have open source, and will be one matter of time to they start delivering SDKs that does not reflect the latest improvements... to sell the SDK with the last updates... but if they do that will give one shot in their own feet. Since they bought Sun, I don't remember to did have read any news telling that they have plans to invest into open source.... nothing about that... just a few comments like "everything will keep like is now", and nothing else. One of the biggest problem that they have now is disassociate the brand Sun from Java, because does not exist one Java developer that will associate Oracle with Java now, and it will take time and that they don't want wait to see.
Oh?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Well, if the projects are open source. Then another company, with same ideals as Sun can take over and fork the project, and then hire those programmers to continue thier work on a project they love and care about.
The best thing about open source is that most projects don't make money. Most posts here have taken for granted that money equals value. Oracle as a for profit business MUST evaluate its role in its open source projects by the profitability of its involvement. But, open source projects can be run for other reasons. And the best thing is that if Oracle drops support for an open source project, unlike a closed source project it can continue. Now, the question is will it. It the open source project was just an appendage of a for fee project, then we haven't really lost anything. If it really solves the needs of a community then that community should pick it up. Free software should be allowed to exist for reasons beyond money, I'm not suggesting that a for profit company should keep unprofitable open source projects, in fact I think that they should not. But individuals, groups and even corporations should be allowed to sponsor open source project for any reason. I know many individuals that have written and continue to maintain open source projects for a resume item, as a tool they love and even just to learn something. I hired just such a guy and I encourage him to use his open source software to solve our companies problems and I encourage him to add features to the open source project. He specifically came to work for me because his previous employer didn't share my views. We have a better product with an employee with the open source experience. Would I say his open source projects are profitable? I don't care, we don't look at it that way. He is profitable for us and our core business is profitable, so, who cares if we sponsor a side open source project.
Yep, if Oracle can't figure out what to do with all these great projects, they'll be letting someone else pick them up who does know how.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
Oracle has reflected recently that they are looking more at Linux than OpenSolaris. And, they've been pushing MySQL as a direct competitor to Microsoft SQL, so there's clearly a future for MySQL. Hopefully in the end, the Sun acquisition will benefit and create quality open source software backed by a big company. So, they are getting in the game, but which product(s) they choose to use is interesting.
If Oracle builds a "services" consulting group around their inherited Open Source products then they can do as RedHat successfully does and sell consulting services related to the products.
Open source is profitable because professional services is profitable. Open source companies like jBilling, SugarCRM and the like make most of their revenue not from selling licenses, but all kind of services around the software they created that they know well. If you want to deploy jBilling in your company, who do you call? Well, the guys that wrote it would be a good choice.
Add to that companies like IBM, that make a lot of money on consulting and that type of services...
Oracle itself makes a good share of its revenue from support. Try to buy an oracle license without support, you will get called every other day by an Oracle salesman offering support. Try then to upgrade to a newer version of Oracle: you'll have to pay all the years of support you did not pay first.
So Oracle knows very well that software services is profitable, and open source is just a way to distribute software to maximize professional services revenue.
People don't have much free time. Some alternatives encouraging people to put time into open source are needed. Paying is one option, but there are others - events, schools, competitions, awards, pledges, etc.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Sheesh! Ok here's my plan for ORACLE.
Dick around for a couple more years, let *any* startup company take your free software and offer their own solutions, since your company not only can't, but is not even sure it should.
Watch your market share for these assets dry up.
have a management meeting and convince each other it was a bad idea to begin with.
wait for it occur to someone to *SUE* the startup
Oh I almost forgot...PROFIT
P.S. Let me know if you have any term papers due this semester that you want me to work on for free (since its for my own good).
P.P.S sorry Kramer, ORACLE is not going to 30 this quarter.
"Be patient :) Ill get to this. I just dont know when. I think I can get back to you by mid February, but it may be March." - by Foredecker (161844) * on Saturday April 24, @01:42PM (#31968126) Homepage
That quote of your words is from here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1495166&cid=30715150 back in January (10th of Jan 2010)...
Once more, to refresh you on it:
This is again, in regards to HOSTS files in VISTA, Windows Server 2008, & Windows 7 being unable to use the smaller & faster + more efficient "0" blocking "IP Address" (vs. the larger, slower, & less efficient on filesize & read/write time 0.0.0.0 (or, worse yet, 127.0.0.1 "loopback adapter IP address") which are STILL useable in Windows VISTA, Windows Server 2008, & Windows 7!).
However/Again (refreshing your mind on the particulars/details), before MS "Patch Tuesday" on 12/09/2008 though? Well - You could STILL USE THE SMALLER & FASTER 0 blocking address in HOSTS files, vs. the larger & slower + less efficient 0.0.0.0 or worse still, the 127.0.0.1 loopback adapter address in Windows VISTA, Windows Server 2008, & Windows 7 (for blocking out KNOWN BAD sites &/or servers)...
Using 0 yields increases in speed + efficiency & due to FAR LESS FILESIZE involved for reads inside the file and reading the HOSTS file as a whole (smaller = faster), especially!
----
E.G.->
HOSTS using 0, with 840,000 blocked KNOWN BAD sites &/or servers entries in it blocked = 18,430 kb size
vs.
HOSTS using 0.0.0.0, with 840,000 blocked KNOWN BAD sites &/or servers entries in it blocked = 23,338 kb size
vs.
HOSTS using 127.0.0.1, with 840,000 blocked KNOWN BAD sites &/or servers entries in it blocked = 24,975 kb size
----
As you can see, 25%-35% approximate filesize diff.'s in using smaller vs. larger preceeding blocking addresses in front of bad sites/servers domain-hosts names manifest themselves ("do the math" etc.), & thus? Using 0 as a blocking address indeed DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE here, for performance sake!
(Which is YOUR division @ MS you head, correct? In the "Windows Client Performance Division" so, this ought to interest you some, & hopefully enough to find out WHY the IP Stack Team has taken out the fastest & smallest + most efficient entry of 0 for blocking in HOSTS files... makes NO sense that they did, because of the evidences above!)
Funniest part is, the Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, & Windows XP still can use the smaller, faster, & most efficient 0 blocking address (vs. the larger/slower 0.0.0.0 & worst of all, 127.0.0.1)... but, MS inserted the ability to use 0 as a blocking IP address back as far as Windows 2000 (not its original OEM pre-service pack/hotfix release, but, somewhere in between SP#1 - SP#4 for Windows 2000... this is a BETTER STANDARD, one that MS set no less, because it yields a smaller & faster read HOSTS file, period!)
The physics of it all back me on this, & so does the math.
Especially when populating either the DNS ClientSide Cache service, OR, the local diskcache (which depends on the SIZE of the HOSTS file)
----
That also brings up 2 more issues I noted on a BUG I have found in hardcodes & inflexible buffers/structures in DNS it seems, in Windows, which I noted to you before (on pagefiles & DNS client too):
The local DNS Client Service needs fixing for larger HOSTS files too, & in ALL FORMS of Windows NT-based OS... I state this, because it "breaks down" & begins to LAG THE OPERATING SYSTEM BADLY with relatively larger HOSTS files being used!
(On a guess, you people @ MS are using the BSD reference design for the local DNS cache via a structure (or possibly an object) that has LIMITED SIZE, rather than a "flexible" FIFO queue (or,