| Oracle Linux? |
Apr. 17, 2006
Larry Ellison, CEO and God-king of Oracle, may not be willing to pay a few billion for Red Hat, but he has thought about buying Novell, and he hasn't closed the door on buying a major Linux distributor.
Now, when most people talk like this, I really don't pay them any mind -- but Larry Ellison isn't most people.
He buys multi-billion dollar companies like PeopleSoft and Siebel over screams of protest the way you or I might buy a new PC. Even when Ellison talks idly, people should listen.
And, if they don't want to be ruled from Oracle's Redwood City, Calif. offices, aka "the Emerald City" or "Larryland," they should be afraid. Very afraid.
This is not a man who takes no for an answer easily. Ellison is, after all, the man who once sued, and beat, San Jose International Airport for the right to land his 90,000-pound, fully-loaded, GulfStream V jet after the airport's nightly curfew.
Stories about Ellison doing whatever it takes to do something his way abound in the industry. And, as some Oracle insiders confess when they're deep in their cups at a bar, many of them are true.
That said, I'm not sure it makes any sense for Oracle to buy a major, or for that matter a minor, Linux distributor. Oracle likes using open-source and Linux both within the company and as an operating system for its databases and applications. Ellison, though, is none too sure about the wisdom of paying big bucks for companies that don't own their product's intellectual property.
He's right, in a way.
For instance, Red Hat makes its money, not from selling you Linux, but from support people who use its Red Hat Enterprise Linux. If you don't need that support, you can run Fedora or such Fedora-based Linux distributions as CentOS or White Box Linux.
Another problem for a proprietary software company wanting to buy an open-source or Linux company is that not only is the business model entirely different -- licensing sales, vs. support -- but your company is really only as good as your employees. If most of Red Hat's engineers and support staff left because an Oracle bought out the company, Red Hat's value would be flushed down the toilet.
No, I think that if Ellison really wants to offer Oracle's customers a complete software stack, from salad to nuts, he should start up his own Linux: Oracle Linux.
It's not like it's hard to do. Anyone with some moxy, a business plan, and a passing grade in Linux 101 can set up a Linux distribution company. It may not be any good and may not show a cent of profit, but anyone can do it.
Did I mention that Ellison wasn't just anyone?
Oracle people, if Ellison directed them to, could produce a solid, commercially-viable Linux distribution of its own in a few months. Maybe less.
Many of the problems small Linux distributors face in the business market -- like being certified on equipment, creating a support infrastructure, or finding reference customers -- would barely concern a company with Oracle's clout.
Still, it would also run into resistance from customers and partners. Sun's Solaris, for example, is still the operating system that more Oracle instances run on than any other operating system. Linux is coming on strong, but I'm not sure Ellison wants to alienate Sun at this stage of the game.
Also, Oracle also has strong partnerships with Red Hat and Novell. Would it want to become competitors with its own partners?
Doh! Well, sure Ellison would! He's done it before.
But, would he do without a good reason? I doubt it.
Red Hat and Novell both need Oracle and they've worked well with them. For that matter, Oracle has worked well with Linux, in general, without any attempt to control it. For example, its OCFS2 (Oracle Cluster File System for Linux) is now part of Linux 2.6.16.
No, I just can't see Oracle getting into the Linux business anytime soon. It's an entertaining notion, but I think that's really all it is.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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