Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison announced the company's first prominent Linux customer Tuesday: Yahoo. But Red Hat hasn't been pushed aside at the Internet company.
"We've already signed a number of support contracts, some for over half a million dollars. And Oracle has displaced Red Hat at Yahoo and numerous other customer sites as their Linux support supplier," Ellison said on a conference call after announcing the company's quarterly financial results. (According to a Thomson Financial transcript, Ellison used even bolder terms, saying Oracle "replaced" Red Hat at Yahoo.)
Red Hat and Yahoo both said that Red Hat hasn't been kicked out of the account, though.
"Our current infrastructure leverages both Red Hat and Oracle Linux products," Laurie Mann, Yahoo's vice president of engineering, said in a statement. And Red Hat spokeswoman Leigh Day added, "Red Hat and Yahoo continue to enjoy a fruitful relationship."
Oracle didn't respond to requests for comment.
It's no surprise that computing technology companies would be eager to sell to Yahoo, which said it has hundreds of thousands of servers to power its business. And while it's unclear how broadly Yahoo will use Oracle's Linux, it is notable that Oracle has secured a high-profile customer, an important milestone.
"We're not going to build the Linux business overnight, but we will build it," Ellison said. "We're in the early days of our Linux support business, but we're off to a very solid start. Our Linux support service is up and running well. Dell, HP (Hewlett-Packard) and CDW (a computer products reseller) are on board to resell Oracle Enterprise Linux."
Oracle has been a strong Red Hat partner, investing in the Linux seller in 1999 and heavily promoting the operating system. But the two companies have diverged as Linux has matured.
Red Hat in 2006 acquired JBoss, whose open-source Java server software competes directly with Oracle software. For its part, Oracle's Unbreakable Linux program turned Oracle into a direct Red Hat competitor. Oracle didn't just sell a version of Linux, it cloned Red Hat's from the source code in an attempt to reproduce its software and hardware compatibility.
Not only was this a clear lie. The other companies that Oracle mentioned during their press conference/earnings call were; HP, Dell, and CDW. Let me see, which one of those does not cosell or resell Oracle and make lots of money from it. I am sure those were hard fought battles against Red Hat, won by the quality of product, support and reputation of Oracle's Linux. I doubt a phone call like the following happened "You need to buy this stuff and use it in your IT operation, or else we will change our terms. Larry sends his best wishes and thanks ahead of time. Please don't make me have to call again." Geez, I can't believe more press people are not mentioning this balony. Maybe the press folks are afraid of Sir Larry also. Wow, sad times.
Why put an enormous effort into making software that other's can come along and just copy it. This is quite funny, Oracle copying Red Hat's software, lock, stock and barrel. I suppose Oracle will be the next open source "victim", when someone else comes along and copies their version of Linux. What goes around comes around!
Well, there's a good lesson in this story on the value of intellectual property or proprietary software.
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MIT creates a simulation to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Spacewar. A relic of the early days of minicomputers, it was one of the first computer video games and set the stage for many others, including Asteroids.
(And yes, that was sarcasm.)
Well, there's a good lesson in this story on the value of intellectual property or proprietary software.