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At Oracle we did an analysis of all the major Linux distributions worldwide. Red Hat was just a major player in the United States - among others. We decided tha

by MrTonyD 11y ago

At Oracle we did an analysis of all the major Linux distributions worldwide. Red Hat was just a major player in the United States - among others. We decided that we needed someone to work with in order to help Linux compete with Microsoft - so that Microsoft wouldn't be able to control all the APIs and we could use our support of Linux as a "sharp stick" for negotiations between Larry and Bill. (Improving Linux more unless Bill stopped competing with products from Sun, HP, IBM, Oracle, etc.) So improvements to Linux and associated desktop applications were intentionally curtailed based on Bill's concessions. So we worked with IBM, who was also feeling the pressure from Microsoft, and IBM effectively "took over" Red Hat by providing investments, providing executives, and assigning hundreds of engineers to work on Red Hat Linux. That is what propelled Red Hat to become dominant. Since some of the changes to the kernel were just for servers - running things like Oracle, and not useful to the typical Linux user, that became Enterprise Linux.

digi_owl 11y ago
So what you are claiming is that Oracle, with IBM assistance, made RH into what it is today?
- MrTonyD 11y ago
  Yes. That is exactly true. When Oracle started working on Linux it was only useful for print servers - and I created a white paper for Larry analyzing its shortcomings (lots of functionality missing from the kernel.) So we, along with IBM, Sun, HP, and others, committed tens of millions in resources to making Linux an actual competitor to Windows. And we kept improving it until Bill made enough concessions, and then we stopped. But by that time Linux had been turned into a real OS, and over the next few years it became a "success story" for open source. But that misunderstands the reality of the hundreds of people we had assigned to make it work and to turn Red Hat into a real company. After that, it could be argued that we stayed involved in open source in order to keep it from succeeding too much as part of quietly negotiated side agreements.

by MrTonyD 11y ago

digi_owl 11y ago

So what you are claiming is that Oracle, with IBM assistance, made RH into what it is today?

MrTonyD 11y ago
Yes. That is exactly true. When Oracle started working on Linux it was only useful for print servers - and I created a white paper for Larry analyzing its shortcomings (lots of functionality missing from the kernel.) So we, along with IBM, Sun, HP, and others, committed tens of millions in resources to making Linux an actual competitor to Windows. And we kept improving it until Bill made enough concessions, and then we stopped. But by that time Linux had been turned into a real OS, and over the next few years it became a "success story" for open source. But that misunderstands the reality of the hundreds of people we had assigned to make it work and to turn Red Hat into a real company. After that, it could be argued that we stayed involved in open source in order to keep it from succeeding too much as part of quietly negotiated side agreements.