Comments on: Oracle to Announce Linux Distro Tomorrow

By: Abby

Abby — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 16:42:20 +0000

Looks nice

By: IT Insights Blog

IT Insights Blog — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 04:16:16 +0000

Oracle Linux: Not… yet…

The rumors of an Oracle Linux distro based on Red Hat that swept the LinuxWorld show this week in San Francisco didn’t pan out. Whether they were just a little premature or true fool’s gold remains to be seen. But……

By: stephen walli

stephen walli — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 01:07:29 +0000

Back in April I also commented. It was a bad idea then, and a bad idea now. Oracle taking on its own distro rather than continuing to contribute to the community is engineering inefficient and a waste of shareholder money, and it doesn’t solve the customer’s problem any better. Full commentary on the blog here:
http://stephesblog.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/08/oracle_linux_ru.html

By: The Ponderings of Woodrow

The Ponderings of Woodrow — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:56:33 +0000

Oracle Linux OS rumor mill heating up……

Back in April, I briefly discussed the possibility of Oracle distributing its own branded Linux OS (Oraclix anyone?) after Ellison opened the door to that potentiality in an interview with the Financial Times. To refresh everyone’s memory, Ellison tol…

By: Kung Fu Apps » Blog Archive » Oracle To Roll Their Own Linux Distro?

Kung Fu Apps » Blog Archive » Oracle To Roll Their Own Linux Distro? — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 23:03:15 +0000

[...] Jeff Nolan, SAP strategist, mentions a rumor that Oracle is set to announce their own Linux distribution based on RedHat tomorrow at LinuxWorld. This could be significant in several ways affecting a number of different companies broadly if accurate. [...]

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 21:01:43 +0000

and by “little brand recognition” I mean those distros outside of RH and SuSe.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 21:00:49 +0000

1) The why is easy, deliver a top-to-bottom IT stack optimized for Oracle databases, fusion, and applications. Why piggyback on an existing project with little brand recognition (Red Hat and Novell are competitive to Oracle anyway) when you can use your direct sales capability to build your own brand off existing code, in this case RH. Aside from all the logical reasons, Ellison’s ego drives him to compete with Microsoft by attempting to offer everything they have…. Ellison’s Linux ambitions don’t begin and end with the server.

2) The market wants choice in the presence of stability, were that not the case then Oracle would not have successfully acquired a bunch of large software vendors. There’s already a duopoly in the datacenter with Windows and Linux, no choice is being taken away, in fact Oracle is adding more choice. In the U.S. RH is dominant, if you fork the code you will do little to disrupt the existing market.

3) Yes.

By: Ulrich Romahn

Ulrich Romahn — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 20:33:17 +0000

Jeff,
I have to partly disagree with you on that. I don’t believe that this would be a really smart move on Oracle’s part.
1. Why would you want to invest in creating the whole infrastructure needed to build and maintain your own Linux distro? Besides the three big ones Red Hat/Fedora, SuSE and Debian, there are already a dozend other distros out there competing for attention. Why not “piggybacking” on one of those projects, pump some money into them and start driving the direction of that distro that way?
2. The market wants choice and that move potentially takes choices away. There is a likely chance that Oracle will start only focussing on their distro and support their products mainly on that platform. However, if companies have already invested in Linux, they want to stick with their distro and want Oracle to continue supporting their platform of choice which is not necessarily Oracle.
3. Oracle is basically “hijacking” the Open Source movement and especially Red Hat with such a move and I am not sure how the community will react to that. I have seen a few “forks” so far in the OSS community, but all of them were initiated by core developers of the original project that somehow had a political reason to start their own thing. This “fork” would only make sense if Oracle can attract some key people from Red Hat and/or Fedora Core which I don’t see happening yet.

-U

By: Jason Wood

Jason Wood — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 19:39:03 +0000

Jeff,

I am hearing this, too, and it shouldn’t surprise people. Ellison left that door wide open in just about any interview he’s given the last few months. I know he explicitly addressed the matter in the FT interview, and even alluded to the possibility on the last earning’s call if I’m not mistaken.

By: Christof on Tech & Biz

Christof on Tech & Biz — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:41:42 +0000

Oracle to Announce Own Linux Distro – Based on Red Hat…

Rumors go that Oracle plans to announce the release of its own Linux version tomorrow – based on Red……