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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)."
Honestly, I do not know what passes for 'knowledge about Oracle', but your comments seem pretty naive.
In the Oracle applications stack, about 90% of code (stored procedures, triggers, table structures etc...) are plainly visible on an installed application stack. The rest (Java runtimes) can be decompiled with readily available tools. Plus, if you have a current support contract, almost everything (technical reference manual, support notes, bug reports, white papers, check lists, etc...)is available on Metalink.
My point is that Oracle has been behaving _mostly_ as an open source company (Ok database executables are a different story) for quite a long time.
The hard part is putting it all together. I have been up to my elbows in this (as a developer) for 15 years, and I only really grok about 15% (prolly less) of the apps.
This is where the Oracle Service and Support revenue model comes in.
Trust me, they get OSS, they are just trying to figure out how to wring more out of the business model.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
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.
What is IBM making money on, the open source software or the hardware it runs on and supporting same?
Yes.
IBM makes money by selling the hardware that runs your open source software.
IBM makes money by deploying the hardware, and the open source software.
IBM makes money by upselling the open source software with proprietary versions (Apache -> Websphere, Jazz -> Rational Team Concert, ...)
IBM makes money by selling entirely new applications based on open source frameworks (nearly anything based on Eclipse).
Oracle can sell their new hardware to run OSS. They can sell services to help deploy said hardware and OSS. They can sell their own versions of apps to complement OSS. They can use OSS to complement their proprietary apps (e.g., getting wikimedia to run on Oracle, though that might be a bad idea, I'm giving it as an example of the concept). Seriously, can't they just look at their competition to see what they're doing?
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?