october 29, 2006 : steve : 9 comment(s)
This is a follow-up post for my "Uncompatible Linux" post...
I'm getting into my CEO Armchair right now and will attempt to give Larry Ellison some advice for his Linux aspirations. I will break it down into bullet points since I know executives like Larry don't have much time to read:
- Stop the FUD. Don't put out lies like "Red Hat only provides bug fixes for the latest version of its software." People are smarter than you think and you will be called on that.
- Fork or Don't Fork. Make up your mind. If you take Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the base for your own OS, more power to you. But, if you make changes, then it is a fork. Again, don't make statements like: "We think it's important not to fragment the market," when you really are. If you are going to fork, then fork.
- Support Open Source. If you choose not to fork, then why not put some money, hardware, bandwidth and resources behind an good project? Try CentOS.
- It's The Support, Stupid. Following along with the above: You're selling support, not software. Why not distribute a good RHEL clone for free, then sell your support for it? Leave the Red Hat Enterprise Linux cloning to someone else.
- Stop Being A Jerk. Kiss and make up with Red Hat. Work out some sort of deal with them. Work together to "speed the adoption of Linux".
- Get Out. Go concentrate on what you are doing: Databases. Leave Red Hat to do what they do best: Linux.
Ok, that is it. Oracle screwed up out the gate with their Linux initiative. They have shown that they are not really ready. So, now they have to make some tough decisions. I am sure arrogant Ellison will not listen to a blogger like me, but it is worth a try.
Comments
Excellent points, and I agree with them 100%.
I think Oracle Enterprise Linux is a new stuff that needs time to stabilize, though.
But even if Oracle has perfect cloning in mind, it will be very difficult to not write Oracle-specific patches, because their customers will ask (and pay) for it. At some point they'll have to officialy fork.
I'm blogging about it in Portuguese.
November 2, 2006 @ 04:43 AM
Avi,
I, too, agree with Steve's points here. As for the Oracle-specific patches, though, remember that the kernel Linux, and a whole lot of the operating system GNU/Linux, is GPL. If Oracle wants these patches in Linux, they simply need to work with Linus and his team. If they want glibc tweaked, they simply need to work with the glibc maintainers. That's what Free Software is all about! They just need to ensure that they write actual good code. If they do this, then they don't need to fork at all.
CentOS would be a really good idea for Oracle. As an Oracle DB customer, I'd never recommend any "Oracle Linux" to my bosses.
Sum Yung Gai
November 4, 2006 @ 05:26 PM
I just listen to Larry's key note from Oracle Open World.
I think whether there is a fork is depending on whether the fix from Oracle is included in the Redhat's next release. The market fragmentation is a responsibility of both companies, not just Oracle.
Dylan
November 5, 2006 @ 11:26 AM
Dylan, agreed. But, I think it will be the responsibility of Oracle to work closely with Red Hat (ie. filing bugs with Red Hat) for it all to happen. I know the CentOS team regularly files bugs against Red Hat in order to get fixes incorporated. And, like I said: The forking part is not the bad part. It is the false pretense that Oracle seems to be putting out about not forking, when they seem to already have forked away.
November 5, 2006 @ 11:39 AM
hey mookie,
very insightful posts on red hat and oracle. thanks!
one thing that i wanted to bring up was that i do think oracle is helping linux and oss by doing this. here's why: today, oracle dbs are mostly run on sun sparc + solaris - very few are run on linux + x86. oracle has been recommending sparc + solaris with their db because they know that just works. now after a few years of more testing, they find out that linux is fine too. so oracle wants to now sell more dbs by lowering the cost of the hardware to the customer. and one of the ways to do this is by telling the customer, hey if you buy oracle db on oracle linux then we'll support you 100%. you don't have 2 vendors to deal with. just oracle. call us and no matter what the problem is: db or os, we'll fix it.
i've talked to the it director at our small company, and he says that this would certainly help. when you buy oracle db, you're buying the app, you really don't care what os or hw runs beneath it, as long as oracle tells you that it's fully-supported.
what do you think?
tiger chen
November 6, 2006 @ 03:25 PM
Tiger, that is a good assessment of the situation and what some would take away from this whole Oracle thing. But, I would wonder if you would trust your mission critical systems to a database vendor, who is just getting into Linux support. Or if you would pay the extra money to get support from a Linux vendor who has been doing Linux support for years.
As for not caring what OS or hardware runs beneath the app, that is also one way of looking at it. But, I think for mission critical applications, I would be rather concerned about what OS (and what hardware) runs beneath the database application. It is a matter of support, security and bug-fixes. If your OS is not well-supported and your mission critical system goes down because of a security fix that was not released in time, then I think at that you would care about the OS and its vendor.
November 6, 2006 @ 09:35 PM
Hi All,
Top class, insightful post & comments on Red Hat Vs Oracle stuff.
But I would like to point just a few moths backs story and I guess what made Oracle to take such a step against Red Hat. I.e. the JBoss Controversy, when Red Hat taken over the JBoss, which to my knowledge Oracle has ideas to take over. And this is what oracle has done to fire back on that defeat.
But when support processes are to be majored it will always be a tough road ahead for Red Hat. But I believe there will be very less migration of existing customers. But the new customers will always want to have a Single Point of Support.
Anyways Look forward to see more comments…
Pravat
November 26, 2006 @ 07:40 AM
Hi all
Some great points here. Having been a customer of both Oracle and RedHat I can't say I've been impressed by support from either. Ok they're both a joke (although both Oracle's Database and RedHat's enterprise Linux distro offerrings are excellent).
I think (and hope) this may prompt RedHat to review it's pricing model and the quality of support offerings. Perhaps better volume/virtualization pricing and less reliance on outsourced callcentres? Or how about per-incident support?
In short: Competition is good.
squalus
November 30, 2006 @ 12:11 AM
Competition, yes. I remember an excellent product from DEC, back in the 80s, called RDB. Oracle bought it and nobody ever heard about RDB anymore. I honestly hope this is not the kind of competion we are talking about here. Oracle's not an OS company, but hey... you never know what a Multi Zillion Software Company Emperor in Chief may wake up dreaming next day. Maybe Bill Gates will get into iPods tomorrow... or was it yesterday ?
Mackie Messer
December 3, 2006 @ 02:56 PM