Larry is just being a cheerleader because he sees economic benefit in the vision of a Microsoft-less future. If people are spending less on their OS, they have a little more to spend on their apps or support.
IMHO, Oracle is doing the same as IBM - chasing after the same pot of IT gold, but wanting a bigger slice. Multiplatform GNU/Linux gives them an opportunity to do that.
IBM gave back to the community - so what will Oracle bring?
Nooface is where I end up going for UI stuff. They cover anything, but love to dote on 3D UI and alternate input devices. OTOH, they've also given decent pointers to CLI stuff and the down-to-earth stuff from Jef Raskin.
this is just like any other department in a company
..and in many cases not an independently profitable part of the company. We touch everyone, but networks, websites, and working PCs are just assumed to be there, like electricity, coffee machines, or air.
At places where software/hardware is not developed, we still exist because of the complexity involved (the latest standards, the latest operating systems, the latest gadget). As "information appliances" become more accepted, IT departments will shrink to only the projects where specialization is needed - there will always be a need for tweakers and glue code. Everything else will be farmed out to IT shops.
The automotive industry comes to mind - it started with lots of designs, lots of incompatable hardware, lots of backyard mechanics. Nowadays there are still people who build (not to mention maintain!) their own cars, but percentage wise they are few and far between. We just want transportation that works.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is a blog from David A. Smith, one of the developers.
Larry is just being a cheerleader because he sees economic benefit in the vision of a Microsoft-less future.
If people are spending less on their OS, they have a little more to spend on their apps or support.
IMHO, Oracle is doing the same as IBM - chasing after the same pot of IT gold, but wanting a bigger slice. Multiplatform GNU/Linux gives them an opportunity to do that. IBM gave back to the community - so what will Oracle bring?
Nooface is where I end up going for UI stuff. They cover anything, but love to dote on 3D UI and alternate input devices. OTOH, they've also given decent pointers to CLI stuff and the down-to-earth stuff from Jef Raskin.
..and in many cases not an independently profitable part of the company. We touch everyone, but networks, websites, and working PCs are just assumed to be there, like electricity, coffee machines, or air.
At places where software/hardware is not developed, we still exist because of the complexity involved (the latest standards, the latest operating systems, the latest gadget). As "information appliances" become more accepted, IT departments will shrink to only the projects where specialization is needed - there will always be a need for tweakers and glue code. Everything else will be farmed out to IT shops.
The automotive industry comes to mind - it started with lots of designs, lots of incompatable hardware, lots of backyard mechanics. Nowadays there are still people who build (not to mention maintain!) their own cars, but percentage wise they are few and far between. We just want transportation that works.