3 ms·

How is it any different from other massive enterprise focussed company (IBM, MS, et al) and why does it merit respect?

mahmud 16y ago
You mean, the MS and IBM that are releasing free software and generally trying to create and foster communities? Instead of MS and IBM, we should compare Oracle to Sun, and see how Sun's policies are being reversed in all public-facing fronts.
- davidw 16y ago
  > see how Sun's policies are being reversed in all public-facing fronts. Like "making money"? Kidding aside, I think you can mix free with proprietary in a way that's beneficial to the community without giving away too much. Google seems to do a lot of open source these days even though there is tons of stuff they keep to themselves. They seem to have a decent image for the work they do perform. Sun had sort of a weird image, IMO - they were kind of heel-draggers in some ways, ahead of the curve in others. More than anything they just seemed confused. I don't think that, overall, they ever really figured out open source and what they should do with it. Oracle's ideas about open source seem to be along the lines of "take what we can, give as little as possible back". We'll see though...
  - 8ren 16y ago
    Sun's revenue came from workstations, which got disrupted by PCs. Everything else drove that.
    - lani 16y ago
      1) enterprise servers 2) Java which drives enterprise computing which runs on any platform. Didn't these two things work against each other for Sun ?
      - badmash69 16y ago
        Not really. Remember Sun's stock during the dotcom boom. Sun failed because of poor execution. They blew the cloud computing opportunity. Their sales people did not chase orders like the HP guys did (this is for a personal experience ). Their Java application server sucked when compared to Websphere and Weblogic. They could not deliver a good story with MySQL acquisition. They let Linux get ahead of Solaris , at least in mind share.
    - gaius 16y ago
      Exactly. I'm old enough to remember when Sun's stock ticker wasn't JAVA it was SUNW... W for workstation.
      - fauigerzigerk 16y ago
        Good to hear you're more than 3 years old ;-)
- dschobel 16y ago
  No, I mean the MS headed by the man who famously called Linux "a cancer” and still operates on the premise the kernel is in violation of MS patents (http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/microsoft-amazon-patent-deal-covers-kindle-linux.ars http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/microsoft-amaz...) I mean the IBM which pulled the rug out from under the Apache Harmony project not a month ago to jump in bed with Oracle. What you're talking about is in actuality a difference of degrees between the three.
- gaius 16y ago
  Right now, on Debian you can do # apt-get install oracle-xe And get the free version of Oracle, as easily as you can get MySQL. You can't do that with DB2. Oracle has a public Yum server too: http://public-yum.oracle.com/ http://public-yum.oracle.com/

You mean, the MS and IBM that are releasing free software and generally trying to create and foster communities? Instead of MS and IBM, we should compare Oracle to Sun, and see how Sun's policies are being reversed in all public-facing fronts.

davidw 16y ago
> see how Sun's policies are being reversed in all public-facing fronts. Like "making money"? Kidding aside, I think you can mix free with proprietary in a way that's beneficial to the community without giving away too much. Google seems to do a lot of open source these days even though there is tons of stuff they keep to themselves. They seem to have a decent image for the work they do perform. Sun had sort of a weird image, IMO - they were kind of heel-draggers in some ways, ahead of the curve in others. More than anything they just seemed confused. I don't think that, overall, they ever really figured out open source and what they should do with it. Oracle's ideas about open source seem to be along the lines of "take what we can, give as little as possible back". We'll see though...
- 8ren 16y ago
  Sun's revenue came from workstations, which got disrupted by PCs. Everything else drove that.
  - lani 16y ago
    1) enterprise servers 2) Java which drives enterprise computing which runs on any platform. Didn't these two things work against each other for Sun ?
    - badmash69 16y ago
      Not really. Remember Sun's stock during the dotcom boom. Sun failed because of poor execution. They blew the cloud computing opportunity. Their sales people did not chase orders like the HP guys did (this is for a personal experience ). Their Java application server sucked when compared to Websphere and Weblogic. They could not deliver a good story with MySQL acquisition. They let Linux get ahead of Solaris , at least in mind share.
  - gaius 16y ago
    Exactly. I'm old enough to remember when Sun's stock ticker wasn't JAVA it was SUNW... W for workstation.
    - fauigerzigerk 16y ago
      Good to hear you're more than 3 years old ;-)
dschobel 16y ago
No, I mean the MS headed by the man who famously called Linux "a cancer” and still operates on the premise the kernel is in violation of MS patents (http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/microsoft-amazon-patent-deal-covers-kindle-linux.ars http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/02/microsoft-amaz...) I mean the IBM which pulled the rug out from under the Apache Harmony project not a month ago to jump in bed with Oracle. What you're talking about is in actuality a difference of degrees between the three.
gaius 16y ago
Right now, on Debian you can do # apt-get install oracle-xe And get the free version of Oracle, as easily as you can get MySQL. You can't do that with DB2. Oracle has a public Yum server too: http://public-yum.oracle.com/ http://public-yum.oracle.com/