Oracle to Compete With Red Hat for Linux Support 221
PCM2 writes "It's not Oracle Linux, but Larry Ellison has announced that Oracle will be providing full enterprise support for Linux. This means not just phone calls but also patches, security fixes, and backports, in addition to indemnification from lawsuits like SCO's. This puts Oracle in direct competition with its erstwhile partner, Red Hat, whose entire business is based on providing similar support for its Linux distro and related software."
first step towards buying red hat? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:first step towards buying red hat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, a competitive market might actually help Red Hat. Lower prices would increase Red Hat's volume, even if some of the sales went to Oracle. The trick is to figure out the optimum price that maximizes total revenue. I suspect that magic price is somewhere south of Red Hat's current pricing. Oracle might accidentally help Red Hat find a richer price point.
For many other reasons, you are correct. Buying Red Hat means Larry gets JBOSS, which he wanted to buy before. And Oracle becomes the top Linux company overnight. That won't happen if players like Red Hat are still on the playing field. Otherwise, "Unbreakable Linux" is simply the latest Red Hat knockoff. Besides, growth via acquisition is Larry's game. Very rarely does Oracle crank up a new line of business on their own.
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This is Oracle we are talking about. Surely there will be strings attached. Let's see if EVERYONE gets the low price (if it's as low as they claim). Knowing Oracle as I do, I predict that the wonderful pricing will somehow apply to only those customers with Oracle support contracts for other Oracle products. I will be very surprised if they offer it as a straight-up substitute for RHEL, available in quantity 1, to everyone with a credit c
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By this you are implicitly stating that no one uses redhat except to run oracle servers. I doubt that is the case. For the vast majority of redhat users out there, the main impact will be further penetration and inneroperability with the rest of their supply chain.
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The Linux OS (Score:5, Informative)
That should have said "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4". They're not supporting every GNU/Linux distribution, nor are they supporting just the kernel.
Remember, there is no such thing as the Linux operating system. Linux is just the kernel, and the various distributions based on it are all different.
Yes yes, this whole debate again... (Score:2)
Re:Yes yes, this whole debate again... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're talking about a specific distribution (which is often the case), use the name of the distribution. If you're talking about the kernel, say "the kernel" or "the Linux kernel", and if you're talking about GNU/Linux systems in general, say "GNU/Linux", to avoid ambiguity.
``Linux distribution is a well accepted term and the practice of shortening it to Linux is well accepted.''
I agree, and I accept that usage, but, in this case, Oracle is supporting a single distro, not Linux in general. Saying that they support Linux is, at best, unclear, and I would say false.
``Without the GNU toolset (or one like it), the kernel would be essentially useless.''
I suppose you mean to suggest that we shouldn't be saying "GNU/Linux". However, I've built and seen systems based on Linux that didn't include GNU software, as well as systems that included GNU software, but not Linux. I can tell you that much of the identity of GNU/Linux comes from the GNU part, not the Linux part. That's why I prefer to use the combined term.
``If a desktop system, at least X, and generally Gnome or KDE is needed, so do you have to say Gnome/X/GNU/Linux in that case? If it's a particular config of a web server do you have to say Apache/Postgresql/PHP/GNU/Linux?''
I am not about to declare that everyone _has_ to call it a certain way, but I do like people to be clear, precise, and truthful. Konqueror is part of KDE, not Linux. Firefox runs on top of GTK, not necessarily Linux or even X. glibc is part of the GNU system, and works with various kernels besides Linux. Drivers for Linux won't work with AIX, no matter how many GNU utilities, X servers, and GNOME's you install.
In cases where it's relevant, it may make a lot of sense to describe a system as Apache/Postgresql/PHP/GNU/Linux, although the various components probably matter to different people. As a webmaster, I probably care about Postresql and PHP, and perhaps Apache, but not about GNU and Linux. As the sysadmin, I probably care about all of them.
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The support matrix.
The support matrix typically specifies product, vendor, major version, minor version & patches.
This thing is not going to support "linux in general" any more that it would support "solaris in general" or "aix in general". There are going to be some obvious restrictions.
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You know, normal people would read that as "Oracle will be providing full enterprise support for [a Linux distribution]."
If an article blurb says that Product X has been "released for Windows", would you require it to specify "XP, 2000, but not Me, 98, or 3.1"?
The word "Linux" is used to refer to an entire distribution. The Linux kernel is usually referred to as just that, almost never simply as "Linux". And finally, there is no way t
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Your Windows analogy doesn't hold water because there are dozens of current Linux distrubutions, whereas there are only a handful of current Windows versions.
The phrasing definitely can indicate something other than Oracle supporting a specific distribution of Linux. It can indicate mul
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No, Linux is a trademark, owned by one Mr Linus Torvalds. He long ago gave his okay to using the name to cover entire distributions. You going to tell Linus he's wrong?
I understand.... (Score:5, Interesting)
But why not use established systems with guaranteed update mechanisms? Something like Debian with the stable branch comes to mind.
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I've thought Debian stable would be a very good target for proprietary software. By Debian's policy, package versions are kept the same, with only security fixes and major bug fixes being applied. There can be years between subsequent realeases. This means Debian stable is a very stable (hence the name) platform to target. Compared to that, many other distributions must be a
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I'm surprised that more people aren't posting the real reason why Oracle would be doing this. From being near DB upgrades, it seems relatively obvious to me. Oracle is not supporting their own version of Linux. All they're doing is extending the *existing* Red Hat support out a few years. Why? Because upgrading the OS on a database is a pain in the arse. To upgrade safely,
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But anyone who supports Debian would be happy to mail their customers a Debian stable disk so they can pretend that they're a "vendor".
They can even change the name on it, if that makes them feel better.
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Oracle would have needed to spend a lot of money on developers anyway if they were going to be running on Linux anyway. For the future this gives Oracle an existing customer base who'll follow them if they ever decide to fork Red Hat. It gives them more leverage over Red Hat.
The b
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a) You've already got a test environment. You test this sort of thing
in your pre-existing test environment before you even consider
touching production.
b) A mere OS upgrade isn't going to touch the DATA. Something like Oracle
can be moved to an entirely different machine on the same arch and
all you will need to do is relink the binaries.
c) Unless your company likes working without a ne
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Oracle Linux is basically RHEL4 and Oracle's Unbreakable Linux Network is basically up2date; these seem like established systems to me.
Extended warranty? (Score:5, Interesting)
TFA says RedHat doesn't sell the 'OS', but that's bullocks. You cannot legally get RHEL without paying for it (some of the copyrighted artwork and name), hence the whole point of the existence of projects like CentOS. Their fundamental business is built on support, but it changes not the fact that they do not give away the distro they sell anymore.
Re:Extended warranty? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, this is Crazy Larry being pissed off that Red Hat bought JBoss. He's going to stick it to Red Hat the only way he can, run his own Linux support business, at a loss, in order to grab marketshare from Red Hat. Once Red Hat is anemic enough, or belly up, and his own customer base is large enough, he'll jack up the rate to something that's profitable. In Economic terms, this is known as "dumping". Flooding the market with low cost goods in order to gain market share. Then when all the competitors go out of business, you have a monopoly. And we all know what happens when someone has a monopoly...
-Runz
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This assumes, of course, that the only reason previous to this point for buying RH Linux is if you wanted to run Oracle, and that's hardly the case. There's a lot of RH Linux that isn't even remotely involved with Oracle software. This will likely put a damper on RH sales, but there still is a whole lot of commercial UNIX to undercut and there's a lot more to Linux than a platform to run Oracle software.
In fact, this could easily backfire on Oracle. Red Hat has been laying off on pushing it's own Postg
postgresql vs oracle (Score:2)
I was wondering when someone was going to mention Postgresql. Oracle's database is essentially a legacy app -- if you're already using it you wouldn't necessarily plan on dumping it immediately, but there's no way in hell you'd start a new business based on it.
It's actually pretty funny having Larry Ellison telling people they can save money by switching to open source soft
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Linux is not a mythical magic freebie that suddenly makes everything else in your IT infastructure free too.
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Anyway, this will be interesting to watch. More options in market, more alternatives to Microsoft combo - I love that. And free software proves what it is worth.
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They do love to either wack or buy competition. Sound familiar?
RH was already struggling with a 34% drop in profit in their last
Yay. (Score:4, Interesting)
Oracle seems to support Oracle - like ocfs2, which so far as I can tell, is the only substantial Oracle contribution in mainline.
grep -r oracle.com
grep -r redhat.com
RedHat has invested in major contributors by putting them on staff. Oracle? Not so much.
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Oracle gains nothing by making the Linux kernel better, people can use Oracle on Windows or other Unix for all they care. Red Hat needs the Linux kernel to be better, Oracle, till now, has had little interest in Linux aside from ocfs2 and related Oracle products.
Maybe now they will start submitting fixes to the kernel since they now are selling a Linux kernel based product.
Re:Yay. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up. (Score:2)
grep -ri oracle
9 72 805
grep -ri redhat
905 6543 84527
So? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So? (Score:4, Interesting)
anytime i reported an issue with our several thousand dollar implimentation, they either already had a patch that fixed it, or had one shortly thereafter.
so i guess everyone can mod both of these 'my individual experience' posts down, and call it even?
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What I would say, though, is given the amount of money they charge, they really should have fewer bugs.
It's about the value chain (Score:4, Interesting)
My guess is that Oracle isn't really targeting Red Hat, they're targeting IBM and eventually Microsoft. Larry E. isn't noted for humility and, if he takes out Red Hat, it's just a way station on the road to a greater goal.
RMS exonerated? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there are several vendors who support their own distro of Linux, but are there previous instances where a third party (Oracle) is competing with a vendor who itself does support (RedHat)?
No, RMS is not validated (Score:2)
His argument has not been validated. We have yet to see revenue from this support be able to fund developement and yield a desired return. Until revenue reaches this level we do not have a potentially capitalist system. This revenue currently funds only part of Linux development, the subsidized portion but not the charity
Trademark infringment? (Score:2)
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Good news but for unexpected reasons. (Score:5, Interesting)
RedHat is stagnant. I have to admit a degree of ignorance here, but as far as I can tell, they are not really doing anything to excite interest in their market. They offer support and their own distribution (apart from Fedora Core) at outrageously high prices. (Even Windows server solutions are cheaper than RedHat.) Sure they gobbled up JBoss, but I do not think there is as much market overlap as one might suspect.
I might even go so far as to say RedHat has done a fair amount of damage to Linux adoption: they create high costs and little value or innovation likely because they face no direct competition.
With Oracle entering the picture, RedHat will be compelled to move quickly—to at least do something. I am not even quite sure what that is, but one way or another, this is adds choice for the market and that is always good, whether it results in a better RedHat or no RedHat.
It turns out my information was outdated. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have not checked the prices of comparable RedHat and Microsoft server offerings. It turns out that RedHat is still cheaper, but by a trivial amount. Compare the RedHat Store [redhat.com] (see: Server Operating System Products) and Windows Server 2003 R2 Pricing [microsoft.com]. (Wouldn't it be nice if Slashdot support post annotation or editing?)
At any rate, Windows might still be a superior server platform thanks to the effectiveness of ActiveDirectory, fine-grained ACL, and so on. I am no Windows apologist (on the contrary, quite the advocate of open source solutions), but I fear Microsoft may be leaping far ahead of their competition in this space.
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Playing devils advocate. (Score:2)
PostgreSQL and MySQL run just as fine on Windows as they do on Linux, as does Apache and anything else you might need to build applications. Windows offers LAMP without the L. Compilers and development environments are even more prolific with Cygwin and just about every Java development tool and application platform running just as well. I cannot speak about the artificial number of connections (I am not even sure what you mean), but it is not sufficient to say Linux has an edge because it has more softw
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If support and updates are unimportant to you and you're willing to run things like Cygwin and Apache on your Windows server to avoid paying for Red Hat, its a lot more likely you're jus
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Accounting for edits. (Score:2)
Perhaps edits to the content forfeit moderation whereas annotations leave it unaffected?
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Long story short, the Linux cluster cost around $20k while the Windows cluster cost around $42k.
Or, in other words, would have added 7% to the cost of the project (so far - the proportion shrinks every day).
Although I *am* curious how you managed to rack up _additional_ Windows licensing cost of twenty grand on the quote. Seems like an awful lot...
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Excellent, ad hominem.
This is what open source proponents and contributors fail to get: it is not about what RedHat give to the community or any other charitable work they do. Potential customers do not look at RedHat offerings and buy their product because they enhanced the kernel or fixed bugs in this project or another.
Yes, it is important, but it does not drive their business nor does it drive adoption. What matters is value. Does RedHat offer everything Microsoft does? No. Is the comparable fu
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In terms of system administration, consider that one of the most often stated reasons unix a
A fundamental problem with open source (Score:3, Interesting)
Company A develops linux distribution, supports it.
Company B simply compies Company A's work, supports it as well.
My question is this, what is company A's incentive to develop a distribution? Because the development costs are 0 to company B and substantial to company A, company B can easily undercut the price of company A. It would seem like you'd have to be a fool to develop a distribution, since the GPL forces you to surrender your work to competitors who can easily undercut your price.
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My Experience with Third-party Support for RHEL (Score:2)
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They could as well submit any customer's bug for Unbreakable Linux that they can duplicate on their official & supported copy of RHEL to RH for fixing and it RH would have to do it for them.
A Dream Answered (Score:2, Funny)
Finally! Now you too can own a $30,000 version of Linux.
* In keeping with the Oracle tradition of no GUIs, no KDE and GNOME will not be included. Larry has his fingers crossed someone else will write one.
* In the Oracle tradition of installers written in Java, you too can have a relaxed day of installation watching those damned applet windows keep redrawing themselves... very slowly.
Ex-Oracle OSS strategy guy's view (Score:4, Interesting)
An interesting point from Dave:
And this quote made me laugh:
Consider the target market. (Score:3, Insightful)
So, now Larry is telling me I can stop paying RH for support, and I can pay Oracle. My cost will be about 1/3 what I'm paying now to RH. When I call for support on one of my Oracle apps, I don't have to worry about whether it is a bug in the app, the DBMS or the OS - the support call is the same and they need to help me figure it out.
Where's the downside for me? If you aren't currently an Oracle customer - fine, keep paying RHAT for support. If you are an Oracle customer, it's a no-brainer.
RH Response (Score:5, Informative)
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I don't think Redhat get it. From the article you linked to:
They seem to conveniently ignore the fact that with Oracle 10g RAC, Red Hat GFS, Red Hat Cluster Suite are irrelevant. 10g's built in cluster software (CRS) and filesystem (ASM) do away with the need for vendor clustering. All you need is a shared SAN di
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I will stick with Redhat supporting ALL of my RHEL servers and Oracle support my 10g RAC.
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Red Hat spreading FUD about another open source product, how noble! And let's not forget how they sent that cease-and-desist letter for CentOS for stating they're based on RHEL...
Let's see what they have to say:
Q: Does Oracle's announcement include support for the Red Hat Application Stack, JBoss, Hibernate, Red Hat GFS, Red Hat Cluster Suite, Red Hat Directory Server, or Red Hat Certificate System?
A: No. Oracle does not support any of these leading open source p
Download Oracle Enterprise Linux OS (Score:2, Interesting)
From: http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux/ [oracle.com]
It seems a rebranded version of RHEL (a la CentOs). -- Ernest
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Ha Ha! (Score:2)
Now I feel better about all that time I spent debugging their commercial apps for free!
Oracle offers SCOmnification .. (Score:3, Interesting)
"Red Hat has a separate indemnification [linux.com] policy. In Red Hat's case, this policy is called the Open Source Assurance program."
Presumably if Larry really believed the SCO case had any validity he wouldn't even consider using RHEL. And in relation to RHEL and the GPL what's stopping anyone buying a single copy of Oracle Linux and repackage it and selling it with support contracts. Presumably if Larry doesn't allow this then Oracle is in breach of the license.
"We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy [redhat.com], distribute and/or modify the software"
Re:I'm confused... (Score:5, Informative)
All a RedHat client has to do to move to Oracle support for their RedHat install is to stop using RedHat's update servers and start using Oracle's. Oracle will provide patches, and will backport those patches to earlier revisions than RedHat does in order to keep enterprise-level clients from having to upgrade all of their systems too often.
So, as it stands now, Oracle will basically be offering a higher level of support than RedHat for the same exact software for a lot less money. RedHat is going to be forced to drastically reduce their prices just to compete.
I would think that over the longterm Oracle's Unbreakable Linux will fork off, especially if this ends up seriously damaging RedHat, but for now Unbreakable Linux is nothing more than a re-branded copy of RedHat.
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Dystopian future: because Unbreakable Linux is built off RHEL (like CentOS is), Red Hat lose (some/half/all) of their support customers to Unbreakable, can't afford to keep producing RHEL, and Oracle base future versions of Unbreakable on what, now?
Re:I'm confused... (Score:5, Interesting)
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"The distro's just fantastic, that is really what I thinks, oh, by the way: Vista stinks..."
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Of course, that might cut into the support income a bit.
Re:I'm confused... (Score:4, Informative)
Ah yep: [infoworld.com]
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Um, what? I have no idea who wrote the individual drivers and algorithms on my Ubuntu desktop, so why exactly should it matter if it was IBM, Red Hat, or even Microsoft?
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You don't think the company that hires the most kernel hackers get to set the direction of the kernel?
Say company R wants to push for an new filesystem, and company O wants to push for a new memory model. Company R has more kernel hackers than company O. Which feature is most likely to find itself in the mainline kernel sooner? Say both c
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What's the problem with that exactly?
Due to IBM's interest and ownership of NUMA machines and mainframes, they might be more problematic in those terms.
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Re:I'm confused... (Score:4, Insightful)
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really. think about it.
i should say; what does oracle get by buying red hat that would still be worth anything after the purchase? after the employees flee their proprietary overlords and the red hat brand has been subsumed in the giant sucking sound of oracle's corporate engine?
the death or purchase (same thing, really) of red hat does not benefit oracle in any way. and it's going to be interesting to see if oracle can actually deliver linux support that an
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The parent poster said You need to adress this argument. "After the employees flee", Oracle certainly is not getting "experienced redhat linux *people*".
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They're not going to be "undercutting" anyone's pricing.
If anything, they will be asking more than Redhat would. If you are already paying 60K per cpu, that's not a big deal really.
You are incorrect (Score:2)
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GOOD! (Score:2)
They have been WAY overcharging for the support they currently provide. Not to mention that both AS and ES versions came with bluetooth(!) enabled on a server install. Stuff like that is just plain stupid.
When they went enterprise-only support after RH9, they shot themselves in the foot because, at the time, people who would have genuinely considered switching to RH (or any other distro for that matter, but RH was THE
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Yes, that looked like a bad move, but I'd say it a little differently: once upon a time RedHat was nearly synonymous with linux, then they played games to "protect their brand" (Fedora Core? What's that? Not to mention "Pink Tie Linux" and so on.) A
Well, not directly competing... (Score:2)
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I also don't see Oracle pushing Redhat out of the market, because while it'll offer its Linux for half price, what they're after is Redhat's middleware st
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Isn't Novell in a different market space? [linux-watch.com]
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Re:Past performance is indicative of future result (Score:2)
80 product- and industry-specific bundles unveiled
Oracle has unveiled a new channel business unit that will sell packages of its applications that have been specially designed for small businesses. Also see: [yahoo.com]
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