Larry Ellison's Linux Distraction

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Mon, Apr 17th 2006 10:44am — Mike Masnick

Oracle has been working hard in the last few months to buy up various open source companies. Even as they failed to acquire JBoss, losing it to Red Hat, Larry Ellison is now talking about how much he thinks Oracle should be offering its own Linux distribution in order to better compete with Microsoft up and down the "stack." This leads to added speculation that Oracle would look to buy out Novell. Still, this seems more about Ellison competing with Bill Gates, rather than Oracle competing with Microsoft. If anything, it sounds like the type of thing that could be distracting to Oracle, and get them focused on a market that doesn't do much to serve their existing customers -- and even opening up an opportunity for companies like SAP to grab more market share. Owning the operating system isn't necessary any more -- especially if it's Linux. The only real benefit to Oracle putting weight into Linux might be to harm Microsoft, rather than help itself.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

7 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Tony, 17 Apr 2006 @ 11:24am

Ornix
A better reason for Oracle to own a linux distro would be to guard agains a growing and constantly improving MySQL.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
alternatives, 17 Apr 2006 @ 2:58pm

And when
growing and constantly improving MySQL.
And when MySQL catches up to PostgreSQL, then Oracle can get worried.
Oracle will be more of a kiss of death to SuSE than anything else.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Jonathon, 17 Apr 2006 @ 4:26pm

Database centric OS
I've always thought that this would make a lot of sense. For a db like oracle that is pretty resource intensive and also usually the only application that is on a server (we have 4 dedicated boxes). Why not have a distro that is designed for doing that single purpose? They could even take the next step and either partner with hardware companies (don't they already?) and have "certified" hardware platforms that have the OS highly tuned for. Not trying to create a vendor lock-in or anything (although that would be what the HW side would want). I really haven't done kernel development, but I would imagine that you could take out quite a bit, and possibly put some filesystem tweaks down in the kernel level. Also, you could configure whatever filesystem was most ideally suited for a db. When you really want to get the last ounce of performance, trim the fat and design everything from the hardware up around the single task of making the database the fastest, most reliable platform out there.

By the way, Larry. If you want someone to help you design it all, then give me a call. I'll work for stock options.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Me again, 18 Apr 2006 @ 9:18am

Re: Database centric OS
Guess this didn't get that much traffic, but here's another thought. This type of OS could easily become a trend, especially as virtualization starts to pick up. You have virtual machines that perform specific functions, each highly optimized.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
auMoose CowHerda, 19 Apr 2006 @ 9:06am

alt linux dist
how hard would it be to come up with a linux dist that is for oracle only ? couple of weeks work at most. just take debian / gentoo & add a package that removes whats not needed. any decent sys admin would do something similar anyway. of cause the management tards think its easier to buy such a thing rather than invest internally or let their engineers be creative ...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Joe, 3 May 2006 @ 9:19am

Larry !!!!
Hi All,

I believe Larry is talking a lot of smack.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/5f7bdc18-ce85-11da-a032-0000779e2340.html

When he says; "If an open source product gets good enough, we’ll simply take it." Well that is fine Larry but according to the GPL, then you will have to give back to the Open Source Community all your improvements, , unless I interpreted that incorrectly.

Oracle is great for the very large corporations, but there are several good Open Source Databases out there that can service the rest of the planet, I think that worries Larry more than he will let on.

Anyother Linux distro, please don't Larry, we don't need you half assing that.

Joe
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Joe, 3 May 2006 @ 9:20am

Larry !!!!
Hi All,

I believe Larry is talking a lot of smack.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/5f7bdc18-ce85-11da-a032-0000779e2340.html

When he says; "If an open source product gets good enough, we’ll simply take it." Well that is fine Larry but according to the GPL, then you will have to give back to the Open Source Community all your improvements, , unless I interpreted that incorrectly.

Oracle is great for the very large corporations, but there are several good Open Source Databases out there that can service the rest of the planet, I think that worries Larry more than he will let on.

Another Linux distro, please don't Larry, we don't need you half assing that.

Joe
[ link to this | view in thread ]