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Whereby "Take it" he says: No. If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. Take [the web server software] Apache: once Apache got better

by lzw 16y ago

Whereby "Take it" he says: No. If an open source product gets good enough, we'll simply take it. Take [the web server software] Apache: once Apache got better than our own web server, we threw it away and took Apache. So the great thing about open source is nobody owns it – a company like Oracle is free to take it for nothing, include it in our products and charge for support, and that's what we'll do. So it is not disruptive at all – you have to find places to add value. Once open source gets good enough, competing with it would be insane. Keep in mind it's not that good in most places yet. We're a big supporter of Linux. At some point we may embed Linux in all of our products and provide support.

muhfuhkuh 16y ago
He did do that, he "took" Red Hat Enterprise Linux software source code, recompiled it, called "unbreakable Linux" and proceeded to undercut Red Hat in support pricing. By most accounts, it's an unmitigated disaster. I think they sold like the first reference sales and then trickled to almost nothing. They still use the term "unbreakable Linux" but there is no OS product marketed around it anymore. Sometimes people don't like the cheaper knockoffs.
- lzw 16y ago
  That's the market at work. I'm sure Larry is not crying over this failure, and if it had been a success it would have only succeeded by spreading linux to more institutions and improving the linux marketplace, market size, etc.
dotBen 16y ago
I never really understood why Oracle forked RH into their own distro, but from this now I can see - it was to essentially demonstrate the cessation of their support of RedHat (given that LE was claiming in the FT piece that Oracle was supporting/helping RedHat at the time) by giving them a little kick in nuts. I think the customers that bought up Oracle Linux were the kind of dumb sheep customers who'll buy anything a vendor pushes them (yes, there are many of those out there). Informed customers not happy with RHEL licensing and support simply swap out to CentOS. It's an interesting examination of customer behavior in fact.
- ora600 16y ago
  Actually, the customers that use OEL are normally customers of the Oracle database. They get the OS for free as part of the license deal and enjoy not having to play the finger-pointing game with Oracle and RH support any more. You have no idea what a relief it is when your DB vendor can't blame the OS for bugs and performance problems, and actually have to solve them. Thats why we love it when Oracle does storage, network and hardware (i.e. Exadata) - we love having one throat to choke.
hyperbovine 16y ago
This is exactly the way open source is supposed to work.

by lzw 16y ago

muhfuhkuh 16y ago

He did do that, he "took" Red Hat Enterprise Linux software source code, recompiled it, called "unbreakable Linux" and proceeded to undercut Red Hat in support pricing. By most accounts, it's an unmitigated disaster. I think they sold like the first reference sales and then trickled to almost nothing. They still use the term "unbreakable Linux" but there is no OS product marketed around it anymore. Sometimes people don't like the cheaper knockoffs.

lzw 16y ago
That's the market at work. I'm sure Larry is not crying over this failure, and if it had been a success it would have only succeeded by spreading linux to more institutions and improving the linux marketplace, market size, etc.

dotBen 16y ago

I never really understood why Oracle forked RH into their own distro, but from this now I can see - it was to essentially demonstrate the cessation of their support of RedHat (given that LE was claiming in the FT piece that Oracle was supporting/helping RedHat at the time) by giving them a little kick in nuts. I think the customers that bought up Oracle Linux were the kind of dumb sheep customers who'll buy anything a vendor pushes them (yes, there are many of those out there). Informed customers not happy with RHEL licensing and support simply swap out to CentOS. It's an interesting examination of customer behavior in fact.

ora600 16y ago
Actually, the customers that use OEL are normally customers of the Oracle database. They get the OS for free as part of the license deal and enjoy not having to play the finger-pointing game with Oracle and RH support any more. You have no idea what a relief it is when your DB vendor can't blame the OS for bugs and performance problems, and actually have to solve them. Thats why we love it when Oracle does storage, network and hardware (i.e. Exadata) - we love having one throat to choke.

hyperbovine 16y ago

This is exactly the way open source is supposed to work.