Hey Oracle, Why Not Ubuntu?

OSS_ilation writes "While much has been said about Novell or Red Hat as potential targets for Oracle this week, there are some in the Linux community who believe a different distro might deserve the attention of Larry Ellison. That distribution is Ubuntu, and analysts like Burton Group's Richard Monson-Haefel believed that it would be a better fit for Oracle, which is looking only for an OS and not for any of the baggage associated with Novell, like Netware. Ubuntu, with its huge community base and version 6.06 on the way, could be the perfect fit, he said."

It's the Apps, not the O/S

[OYAHHH]

Richard Monson-Haefel,

Says "Oracle, which is looking only for an OS".

Well he is wrong. Oracle is pretty much O/S neutral. And they have good reasons for being so. I'll let you figure that one out on your own.

If all Oracle wanted was a Linux O/S distribution then what would stop them from simply going to a particular distribution's website and downloading it?

What is really happening is that one of their major Linux partners, Redhat, has been moving into the applications business recently. So much so that they have begun to compete with Oracle on quite a few fronts.

Thus, Oracle is looking at the situation and saying what money making venture, not charitable situation, is the best fit in a changing competitive landscape. Apparently the answer is Novell, i.e., fits better than any other, it's more mature, etc.

Why would they want the baggage?

[xzvf]

What about the Ubuntu community makes anyone think they would want to be locked into making Oracle applications run better?

What about Oracle and Larry makes anyone think they would want to answer to Ubuntu community every time they want a change to make an Oracle application run better?

Re:Ubuntu & Oracle -- two different universes

[saleenS281]

"Once installed, Oracle can handle 10,000 customers a second on a 40-million row table"

It all looked good except that line to me. You need a *, I'll add it for you.


Once installed, Oracle can handle 10,000 customers a second on a 40-million row table*
*assuming you have the obligatory DBA who earns 6 figures to optimize your tables twice a week.


unfortunately for me, the company I work for does not. And let me tell you, oracle is a complete dog if you don't have a DBA doing the proper optimizations.

Re:Ubuntu & Oracle -- two different universes

[Anonymous Coward]

"Once installed, Oracle can handle 10,000 customers a second on a 40-million row table"

But only for 5 minutes, then you run out of extents and then you have to hire a third DBA who actually knows how to administer the DB. Who then proceeds to suggest changes that require you to buy a bigger more powerful server, create huge amounts of grants so that any of the more powerful features require DBA assistance to setup and maintain requiring you to hire another DBA to help the previous...

Why not Ubuntu

[Elektroschock]

When we speak of Novell we mean SuSe Linux. Suse is a KDE centric distribution which has a respectable market share on Linux desktops in Europe. Currently some Novell desktop strategist try to achieve the same with Gnome centric solutions, with limited success.

(K)Ubuntu has no market as the product is not sold.

Companies can justify to buy another company and lose a lot of money for the strategic advantage. They cannot justify to donate large portions of money, even when the effect would be the same.

The other issue is control. When Oracle buys Novell they can control corporate policy but they will have no say over Ubuntu. And I do not believe they will buy canonical.

As Oracle I would rather buy Mandriva.

Re:I don't think the people understand

[Billosaur]

Anyone in the ubuntu community doesn't quite understand what will happen if oracle were to buy out Ubuntu. Ubuntu in my experience is targeted at making it easy for n00bs to use linux. Oracle will definitely NOT be focusing on this area. They'll be focusing on tweaking whatever OS they do use to make oracle easier to use and setup. They don't care about the latest video codec, your new soundcard, or that great new 3D rendered desktop.

Kiss Ubuntu goodbye is the long and the short of it. It will be subsumed into Orix, which if it's anything like the Oracle DB, will be buggy, riddled with security flaws, and generally filled with unnecessary overhead. It's amazing how many clueless big company CEOs think they can snap up some small company with a good idea, incorporate it into their own bloated company, and come out with something better. Ain't gonna happen.

My comments for yesterday about Oracle trying to buy Novell [slashdot.org] still hold. This isn't going to help Oracle compete against Microsoft; if anything, it will threaten to strangle any creativity in Ubuntu and allow Oracle to be overtaken by its competitors. Oracle should stick to making databases.

Duh...

[big.ears]

Ellison's announcement was not about acquiring Novell--it was an announcement meant to punish Red Hat for acquiring JBoss out from under Oracle's nose. If Ellison can't have JBoss, he's threatening to compete directly against the firm that has it. The stock market has taken back all the gains RHAT had since they announced the JBoss deal; down 5-6% yesterday. So forget about Ubuntu, this is just PR.

Re:Only one problem

[MoxFulder]

Very true...

Basically the whole Ubuntu community has been freeloading off Mark Shuttleworth's resources for a couple years and it's been quite a fun ride. Thanks, Mark :-)

As far as I can tell, what he's trying to do is to use his considerable wealth to build up a really top-notch distro that sticks close to free software ideals, and he's hoping that he'll come up with a viable business model to make some money off of it along the way. I sincerely wish him luck, I think it's a rather risky but admirable move.

Re:Ubuntu?

[chris_mahan]

>>> you work a lot with databases don't you ?

Ah, unfortunately, I do with Oracle. 5TB worth, and the table listing takes forever to load (in thousands).
We use PLSQL Developer, toad, ERWIN, Informatica, pl/sql...

I'll agree with you that Oracle is a bear.

It's a little like an aircraft carrier. All bow before it, but you need 6,000 crew and 30 support vessels to be fully operational. But then you can project power all over the world and piss off third world nations.

There are how many AC in active duty worldwide? 10, 15 top?

I'm rambling. I'll stop now.

Re:Only one problem

[Philodoxx]

I disagree, there are plenty of ways to build up a successful distro without going to the lengths that Ubuntu has to build up its community. If Shuttleworth wanted to make a distro, but wanted to do it frugally he wouldn't host the ISOs on Ubuntu's servers, and he most certainly wouldn't get discs factory pressed and shipped to anybody anywhere in the world.

Ultimately I have no idea what Mr. Shuttleworth's plans are, but I get the impression that he's made his millions and is content with what he has. I'm sure that if the opportunity presented itself to make Ubuntu profitable he would take it, but flat out selling the company to Oracle would be a very abrupt turn around from his post Ubuntu behaviour.

Re:Ubuntu & Oracle -- two different universes

[charlesnw]

The host freezes up after the first 5000 queries ;) /blockquote I know that was meant to be funny but its also flat out wrong. There are major corporations (mine included) running mission critical apps on mysql. Our database is over a terabyte and grows about 1 gigabyte a week. It is in use 24x7 and supports multiple call centers and teams.

Re:Oh, god, please no

[Idimmu Xul]

let's face it, ubuntu is already quite bloated

Care to back that up with some evidence? If by bloated you mean 'comes with more than just twm' or 'requires media larger than a floppy disk' then sure, but then again all the magical ram and processor power available nowadays (within the past 4 years) that dwarfs the museum piece you use daily easily copes..

Re:Oh, god, please no

[moro_666]

martin@martins:~$ dpkg -l | grep ii | wc -l
1630
martin@martins:~$

and no i don't have every possible item installed, i don't even have most of gnome's stuff :)

i have perl, python , php , kde, xorg, apache and some usual developer stuff like vim/automake and a few here

now come and tell me that this is normal...