Oracle Finally Unveils Its Linux Plans

from the finally dept

Wed, Oct 25th 2006 2:45pm — Joseph Weisenthal

This last April, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison dropped hints that his company might be interested in offering its own version of Linux. Since then, there's been lots of speculation about what he meant. Because the company's been so acquisitive, many figured that the company would buy a Linux distributor, like Red Hat. Today, at its OpenWorld conference, Ellison finally announced the company's strategy. Starting immediately, the company's going to offer full support for Red Hat Linux, including maintenance and bug fixing, and it promises to do it at a cheaper price than Red Hat itself. Investors in Red Hat have fretted about this possibility for awhile, though it's not all bad news, since it amounts to a big endorsement of the company's offering. The bigger theme to note is that in the software industry, the business models of closed and open source companies are converging. The software itself, which has no marginal cost, is getting cheaper and cheaper, while the money is made on the service and support deals that come along with it.

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MikeR, 25 Oct 2006 @ 2:53pm

"...and it promises to do it at a cheaper price than Red Hat itself."

Good thing I wasn't drinking coffee when I read that line.
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- William, 25 Oct 2006 @ 4:18pm
  
  Re:
  "...and it promises to do it at a cheaper price than Red Hat itself."
  
  Good thing I wasn't drinking coffee when I read that line.
  
  I was drinking coffee when I read it. And Oricle has never done anything cheap.
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YourEnglishTeacher'sTeacher, 25 Oct 2006 @ 2:54pm

typo
"Since then, there's been lots of speculation about he meant"

about what he meant...
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- Martin in the UK, 25 Oct 2006 @ 3:51pm
  
  Re: typo
  Pedant i suppose a typo has never exited yous digits
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  - chris, 25 Oct 2006 @ 5:45pm
    
    Re: Re: typo
    lol, irony
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Ajax 4Hire, 25 Oct 2006 @ 3:17pm

Here is a way to make money..
"..promises to do it at a cheaper price than Red Hat itself."

Since Red Hat charges me $0.00,
if I could sign up with Oracle, they would pay me for support.

I don't know how much I would charge for Oracle support but it won't be cheap.
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- chris (profile), 26 Oct 2006 @ 8:29am
  
  Re: Here is a way to make money..
  "..promises to do it at a cheaper price than Red Hat itself."
  
  Since Red Hat charges me $0.00,
  if I could sign up with Oracle, they would pay me for support.
  
  there is a world of difference between fedora and RHEL.
  
  i haven't touched an oracle box in years, but back in the day it required it's own special partition with it's own special filesystem to store data on, it was practically it's own OS already. having it's own kernel is just a small step up from there.
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Brian, 25 Oct 2006 @ 4:03pm

Cheaper than Red hat? Doesn't mean it'll be better....

Considering Oracle's resolution to problem solving for their 9i or 10g databases is "upgrade to the next version" (even if it doesn't fix the problem)... i cannot wait to apply this on the OS level as well.
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DW, 25 Oct 2006 @ 4:34pm

Interesting Business Plan
I have to wonder if MS is behind this (as they were SCO).

Basically Oracle will copy the RedHat product and sell support for it at a cheaper price than current RedHat support. (which is not free Ajax)

So what happens when RedHat goes out of business?

Does Oracle have the expertise to put out their own product as opposed to recompiling and releasing RedHat's product?

Why doesn't Larry just buy RedHat?
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Nitin Borwankar, 25 Oct 2006 @ 5:46pm

this is a way to reduce the buying price of redhat
Larry *will* buy RedHat, he is just softening it up first.
Those of us who have been in the database business in the 90's, know this ....
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