451 CAOS Theory 
A blog for the enterprise open source community
“Fundamentally, this is free software in a proprietary wrapper”
Nick Selby, October 25, 2006 @ 7:57 pm ETEarlier today, we reported on our discussions with Mark Shuttleworth on the release of Edgy Eft and the speculation about whether Oracle might announce a partnership or closer business ties with Ubuntu. We weren’t playing All The President’s Men - it wasn’t a major scoop when we said that nothing would happen today between Ubuntu and Oracle.
As Shuttleworth told us later, “We’ve made no secret of the fact that Oracle’s a key player in the ISV market for any OSV. If we ever announce full certification of Oracle on Ubuntu it would be a decisive moment for the project. I do believe we’ll get there, there’s growing demand for it among Oracle’s customers, so I think it’s likely to happen eventually.”
Later, Oracle announced that it would support Red Hat Enterprise Linux as part of its Unbreakable Linux program, by providing its own patches, fixes, updates and back ports, in addition to its own binary distributions of the operating system.
After the announcement, Shuttleworth told us,
“It’s a very interesting move by Oracle, and sends exactly the ’services based’ message I would expect them to want to send. On the one hand this is a hell of a shot across Red Hat’s bows, on the other, it further entrenches Red Hat’s position at the centre of the Linux-for-the-enterprise game.
“I think we can expect Oracle to get frustrated with supporting someone else’s codebase. If it takes off from a business perspective, then fine, but I really doubt that large numbers of people will switch from Red Hat to Oracle as a provider of support for Red Hat. Red Hat, certainly, is not going to make it easy for customers to live on both sides of the fence, and most companies will want SOME access to Red Hat. So if Oracle wants to make money from ‘owning a linux stack’ then I don’t think this is a winner. On the other hand, if they just want to keep a lid on Red Hat, without rocking the boat too much, then this works fairly well.
“Fundamentally, though, this is still free software in a proprietary wrapper. The pricing may be different, but it’s still old-school thinking. I don’t think anybody who will consider jumping to Ubuntu from Red Hat will pause very long on the Oracle option.
As Martin Schneider and Raven Zachary wrote tonight in our Market Insight Service, “What intrigues us is the possible end game for Oracle. Does it plan to buy Red Hat in the future at a reduced price? If that is the plan, isn’t it hurting itself by essentially creating a variant of the distro? And how will these potentially converging code bases be rectified if Oracle makes an acquisition attempt of Red Hat later on?”
Categories: Licensing, Linux, M&A, Software, The 451 Group
Comments RSS feed | Trackback URI
Mark Shuttleworth on Oracle’s Linux: “Free software in a proprietary wrapper”…
The451 is carrying a great analysis of the Oracle Linux move by Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the leading community-based Linux distribution, Ubuntu. Here’s a gem from Mark:I think we can expect Oracle to get frustrated with supporting someone else’s…
So Ellison Was Serious: The Oracle Linux Q&A…
By now, most of you are probably aware that Oracle has made the rather momentous decision to enter the operating system market via Red Hat bits. Not by partnering with Red Hat. Instead, Oracle has decided to take advantage of……
[...] és akkor itt az ubuntu, akinek savanyú a szőlő, de ha mark belegondol, az oracle logikusan döntött. az ubuntu ebben a kategóriában nem név. okosan alulról építkezik és még legalább 2 év mire enterprise szereplő lesz maga mögött tudva addigra a core debian tábor egészét. ezért az ubuntu, most még kétszer kimarad a dobásból, de ha jól csinálják hihetetlen erősen kerülnek sorra… [...]
First, I know not whether CAOS is an acronym or a terrible (possibly on-purpose) mis-spelling of CHAOS. Either way, that’s no way to start an article. Second, Ellison’s “shot across the bow” of Red Hat is what gives a bad name to all software products and services. He (Larry) has only emphasized what many big business leaders secretly believe inside the board room: Software companies are still toys and are still managed by little boys in silly shirts and tennis shoes. What a shame that the most business-like company we have out here is Sun and IBM. Doing busisness “should” be fun. Doing what you like to do “should” be fun. But the likes of Ellison and others of his ilk (I just love using that expression - don’t you?) are making it harder than ever for a small company to get started and obtain serious - meaning sufficient - capital in order to obtain a sufficient momentum go guarantee success. I think I’ll go talk to my dogs. They seem to make better sense than the leaders in Silly Valley.
Hi jco - thanks for the comment post. CAOS is an acronym that stands for the Commercial Adoption of Open Source. It’s our open source research service. We include the definition of this acronym in the sidebar, although this is not visible to RSS readers, which may be the confusion in your case.
Who is Oracle really going to kill ?…
So when Seklos showed the world ,well Oracle OpenWorld anyway, how to migrate from RedHat support to Oracle support ,
the whole industry started to comment on what Oracle was trying to do.
People claimed oracle was still thinking old-school
,…
Yeah, totally agree with you… But what if… Nahh.. You’re right! Great post!
I think most of peoples are probably aware that Oracle has made the rather momentous decision to enter the operating system market via Red Hat bits. Not by partnering with Red Hat.
I thank you for your comment.
This is a great post…
Dennis
It is a great blog. I agree with you.
I suspect that’s thereason general public want to read blog….Internet visitors generally create blogs to declare themselves or their secret views. Blog grant them same matter on the monitor screen what they specifically needed,so as the above stuffs declared it.
Interesting article, certainly food for thought
Well I wana must say that. This blog is very imformative for me and I m very glad full for this blog owner. And I must say this to blog owner u make more this type blogs and we get more information abt this. Thanks
Great plugin may be… Thanks!
Catholic Boarding Schools for Teens…
Catholic boarding schools have reinvented the thought of boarding schooling, offering students and their families an exclusive educational experience that accentuate academic excellence, assortment, a variety of additional and athletic opportunities, a…
Nice article. i like it.
I would like to say you all some this. This type of blogs is very informative but some guys miss use it just like thay divert the topic and I don’t like this . http://www.penisenlargementy.com