Re:Let's examine other Oracle attempts at open sou (Score 2, Insightful)

Red hat are a real part of the open source community and contribute an awful lot of code to Linux. They certainly haven't done it all, but they understand the spirit of open source and help out a lot. They aren't perfect, and I prefer other distributions, but Oracle haven't done anything for linux that wasn't to their direct advantage (making Oracle products run better.)

I agree with the assertations about Oracle Application Server - part of my job is administering it, and it's a shocking piece of junk at times. I really think that's why they wanted Jboss, they can see how much better the code is than their own offering :)

Oracle database is great, but it will be surpassed in the future by open source databases like Postgres and MySQL (both of which are also excellent databases.) The reason it costs so much, is because it makes people feel good that it costs so much - indeedd costs so much, because if it cost less, less people would buy it. Bizarre logic, but it's the way some people think! (especially IT managers in big organisations).

Very few people who make the purchasing decisions actually have any technical knowledge of the product they are buying. Oracle will do well out of this move since it allows old fashioned IT managers to buy into Linux without really buying into Linux. They can stay in that comfortable place where they sleep well at night. They say no one ever got fired for buying IBM. No one ever got fired for buying Oracle either, regardless of how much it costs, or how well it works. Despite Red Hat being a well known company, they're still a little too 'edgy' for some sections of the IT community. It doesn't matter that it's the same code...it has the Oracle logo on it now :)