Oracle Boss Says OSS Needs Big Business

Rob writes "Oracle Corp's CEO, Larry Ellison, has maintained that open source projects are only successful when major technology corporations get involved and doubted that open source will have a major impact on the software areas in which the company operates. Speaking at Oracle OpenWorld Tokyo Ellison also confirmed that the company had inquired about acquiring open source database vendor MySQL AB and denied that Oracle's recent open source acquisitions were designed to harm its rival."

Re:"Mission critical"

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if it did mean behemoths, it's still wrong. The .org TLD runs on PostgreSQL [slashdot.org], for example. Incidentally, it used to run on Oracle, and they switched to PostgreSQL - perhaps that explains why the FUD about open-source databases is flowing thick and fast from Oracle.

Well meaning, somewhat true, mostly bu11$h!t

[bshensky]

I've been doing Oracle since V5 and Linux since Red Hat 4.5. My take:

From the perspective of Open Source, Larry's like that "successful" uncle at your family picnic. He brings lots of toys to play with, the kids love him, is largely generous to a fault during his visit. But ask him how he made his riches, and he's liable to try to suck you into his pyramid scheme, and that's the last thing you want to hear at your family gathering.

Most of you would think it would be just fine if he stopped showing up at the family shindigs, but deep down, you'd all miss him, even if only a little bit.

Oracle wouldn't engage Open Source if there wasn't something for Oracle to gain from it. Let me tell you, Oracle App Server would be far more an abomination than it is today had they not built the latest version around Apache, for example. Their "grid" marketspeak is built firmly on the proliferation of free OS on cheap hardware, so they've already tied their future to (and bet it on) the success of Linux, and they're damned if they're wrong.

Ultimately, I think Larry and Oracle have taken on a relatively healthy, pragmatic relationship with Open Source. There's plenty of banter about how Oracle's assisted Red Hat, helped Zend get off the ground, and all that, but it's sometimes difficult to actually quantify what they have infused back into the OSS realm. I wish I'd see more Oracle-backed projects on SourceForge, for example.

In the same breath, I'm just a bit disturbed about their shenanigans with MySQL. WTF? I tend to believe they're trying to leverage the MySQL *technology* into their software offerings, and at the same time make themselves the clear target for migration when companies grow, rather than obliterate the MySQL product itself. Obliterating MySQL would amount to biting the hand that feeds Oracle - the backlash would be fierce and paralysing. Instead, I could easily see a Oracle-branded read-only data warehouse *cache* bolted onto its App Server product that's "Powered By InnoDB". Get it?

Larry should just shut up and find a better way for the Rasums Lerdorfs and Bob Youngs of the world to get heard. We get it, Larry - you're successful. Now shut up and eat a hot dog.

Re:"Mission critical"

[MECC]

On the other hand, a single mega corp like GM, dying from the head downward though it may be, probably represents a market of roughly equal magnitude to all the 30- person businesses in the country.

Ellison is a hammer looking for nails. As for the above quoted statement, here are some facts:

From www.sba.gov [sba.gov] (some headings clipped for brevity; link point to PDF file with full text):

The Office of Advocacy defines a small business for research purposes as an independent business having fewer than 500 employees.

Small firms
- Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
- Employ half of all private sector employees.
- Pay 45 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
- Have generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually over the last decade.
- Create more than 50 percent of nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).
- Supplied more than 23 percent of the total value of federal prime contracts in FY 2004.
- Produce 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms. These patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.
- Are employers of 41 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer workers).
- Are 53 percent home-based and 3 percent franchises.
- Made up 97 percent of all identified exporters and produced 26 percent of the known export value in FY 2002.

In 2004, there were approximately 24.7 million businesses in the United States, according to Office of Advocacy estimates. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) estimates there were 29.3 million nonfarm business tax returns in 2004; however, this number may overestimate the number of firms, as one business can operate more than one taxable entity. Census data show there were 5.7 million firms with employees and 17.6 million without employees in 2002 (and 18.6 million without employees in 2003).