Oracle has yet to prove Linux cred

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison fired a broadside at Red Hat on Wednesday. But now that some of the smoke has cleared, it appears some cannonballs went wide of the mark.

Oracle pledged to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux--charging less than half of Red Hat's list prices--and to supply its own free version of that product built from the publicly available source code. Oracle pledged high-grade support from its own army of employees--including Linux kernel programmers who understand the most technical details.

The Redwood Shores, Calif.-based software giant essentially announced a plan to divert Red Hat's support subscription revenue stream into its own coffers. Red Hat's stock plunged 24 percent Thursday, closing down $4.68 at $14.83 as investors erased $681 million in market capitalization.

Red Hat's business is under new pressure, but it won't be simple for Oracle to walk off with all its customers. The big sticking point for Oracle: potential incompatibility with genuine Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Take the case of Cisco Systems, which has more than 5,000 RHEL subscriptions for its developers' Linux workstations. One person involved in making sure the Linux systems run smoothly is concerned that Oracle's Linux lacks the hardware and software certifications possessed by RHEL and its main current rival, Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server.

"It's going to take years to develop the relationships with outside vendors currently certified for Red Hat and Suse," said the technician who requested anonymity. "For company like mine, we can't go out on a limb like that. It has to be a certified solution."

The certification hurdle
Oracle argues that any application that will run on RHEL will also run on its version of Linux rebuilt from Red Hat's source code, but the Cisco tech isn't having any. "It's not going to be exactly the same," the tech said.

Others are cautious, too. "I wouldn't try to apply an Oracle operating system patch to one of my RHEL servers. That would probably lead to some instabilities," said Tabor Wells, director of technology for Smarter Living, which runs the SmarterTravel.com and BookingBuddy.com Web sites.

That opinion matches that of CentOS programmers, who have been cloning RHEL based on source code for years.

BEA Systems, an Oracle competitor that sells Java server software that runs on Linux and other operating systems, is an instructive example.

"You wouldn't believe the complexity of our certification process. We have to certify every version of an operating system with every version of our product on different hardware, using diff Java virtual machines...There's an unbelievable cost to adding another operating system to the matrix," said Eric Stahl, senior director of investor relation. "If Oracle comes out with its own thing unsupported by companies like us, customers won't adopt it."

Oracle's pledge to provide its own bug fixes--in some cases fixes that Red Hat isn't providing--poses further problems. Oracle said it will periodically re-synchronize its software with Red Hat's, but that means the company will remain reliant on Red Hat to avoid straying down a different, incompatible path in the software development road.

"The major risk is that Oracle will fork Linux. If Red Hat does not incorporate Oracle's bug fixes, Oracle will fork the operating system, which could limit its impact," First Albany analyst Mark Murphy said in a report Thursday.

Punishing Red Hat
Red Hat, through its JBoss acquisition, has had the temerity to start competing directly with Oracle. Now Oracle has returned the favor, and even if customers don't plan to buy, they can benefit.

"Customers now have a viable way to drive down the cost of running Linux and are likely to use this information in contract negotiations even if they don't switch," said Credit Suisse First Boston analyst Jason Maynard. "This move was very aggressive and is likely going to cause disruption in the Red Hat business at some point in the coming quarters, as Oracle accounts (for or) influences around 10 (percent) to 15 percent of their business."

[suuperjan]

stock price

maybe "all" Oracle wants to do is to buy Red Hat, and Unbreackable Linux is only build to give them a huge 30% discount on the price of the compagnie.

Wouldn't that make any sence?

[caudio_roma]

Oracle claim of Linux support is a total Hoax

This Advertising by Oracle that they are offering support for Linux for $99 and for so called
enterprise Linux for $399 per server is a total lie. A pure false Advertising.

Call Oracle, the number they gave on this Ad which ran in such places ad WSJ and you will see what I mean. In case you dont have it is 1.800.ORACLE1
I called them, after 3 attempts I finally got to a person who:
1- Did not know what version of Linuix Oracle was supporting. Imagine something as elementary as which version of Linux are you supporting he could not reply to.
2- Did not know what the support entailed. Can you imagine that!
3- Asked him if support means whether they would remotely access our server and fix our Linux installation he replied they have no means of remotely accessing servers!
Free Winscp anyone!

This is just one more Hoax coming out of Silicon Valley.
Certainly not on par of Google buying UTube for $1.6Bill Hoax, which was purely one hand of Sequoia capital selling to the other hand to jack up the price of Google so they could dump Google shares on public, but still pretty big Hoax.

P.S., Oracle provides support of Oracle DB at about $50K per year per server, starting.
They just sold a support package to one government agency for $20Mill per year, etc.
So if they charge $50,000+ per year for Oracle DB Support, how the HEK are they going to provide Linux support for $399 per year.

BTW, I finally asked the Oracle person on the other side of the phone, that I wanted to buy Linux enterprise support for $399 per year that they are Advertising, called his/Larry's bluff, he then took my number and never called back. I hope they do. Since then I would be able to replace our system Admin who we pay $6000 per month with 24/7 support from Oracle for $399 per year.

Again, this Oracle claim is just one more lie/Hoax out of silicon valley.

[dragonbite]

Red Hat's response

Thought it would be interesting to read
http://www.redhat.com/promo/unfakeable/
There are more questions and answers, I only grabbed a few.

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Q: Does Oracle's announcement include support for the Red Hat Application Stack, JBoss, Hibernate, Red Hat GFS, Red Hat Cluster Suite, and Red Hat Directory Server?

A: No. Oracle does not support any of these leading open source products.

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Q: Oracle says their Linux support includes the same software compatibility and ISV certifications of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Is this true?

A: No. Oracle has stated they will make changes to the code independently of Red Hat. These changes will not be tested during Red Hat's software testing and certification process, and may cause unexpected behavior. Hence Red Hat software certifications are invalidated.


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Q: Does Red Hat allow you to tailor your support level to your workload?

A: Yes. Many customers match their Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription level to their application SLA requirements. For example, customers may choose a Basic subscription for non-mission critical file and print servers, while selecting Premium subscriptions for database servers. Oracle does not allow this flexibility - their support policy reads: "If acquiring Enterprise Linux Premier Support, all of your Oracle supported systems must be supported with Enterprise Linux Premier Support."


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IDEA FOR THE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS: Maybe Oracle is trying to align themselves with Linux pushing it's "indestructability" and other claims PLANNING on making it nearly impossible to maintain the quality Linux is able to achive FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE of then pointing fingers at Linux and saying "you lied" and "you suck" and otherwise spread FUD that people may listen to in order to tarnish Linxu's good name?! Just an idea.

[Ted Miller]

Hmmm

Are they to stupid to develop their own Linux version and give support? Oh wait a minute did not Microsft do the same? Steal software?

[Seaspray0]

Too many cooks

Aren't there enough linux distributions available as it is? Incompatability between distributions is a problem that appears will only get worse now. I do not approve of Oracle's tactics.

[sughyosha]

The O/S Brains Trust

Look at Red Hat's track record.

They have become the "Operating System Brains Trust" for the biggest movers of Computing Iron.

They provide an important "leveller/equaliser/normaliser" for companies like IBM, HP, DELL - and many others. They provide O/S Software standards by which customers can insulate themselves from a lock-in to any individual Big Iron Maker's proprietary ambitions.

I think that Oracle has missed the point - altogether. Oracle does not make Big Iron.

SO - why is Oracle acting in a hostile manner towards Red Hat?

Maybe the JBOSS acquisition is the provoking trigger? Might there be any other reasons?

I think that Red Hat Linux, combined with - (so many independent OSF projects)+ (the strategies of the Big Iron companies) - present a vast landscape that will threaten any company with "I want it all proprietary hegemony" on its agenda.

Maybe Oracle, like Don Quixote de la Mancha, is tilting at windmills - and - Red Hat happens right now to look like one of the windmills.

[zaznet]

The Linux Application

Oracle is about to sell the next generation of Linux distributions. Those that are not sold for Linux but sold for the applications that run on top of the OS. This is not just a shot at Red Hat, but also Microsoft.

Buy a copy of Oracle 12.0 when it launches and the DVD will include everything you need to install the OS and application on a bare-bones server. Oracle is pledging to support that product when they start shipping it by providing support for an otherwise unsupported version of Red Hat's Linux (Fedora).

This is not Oracle selling RHEL and providing support. It is Oracle selling Oracle Linux based on Fedora (which is based on RHEL) and providing support for that product.

You will see some other major application developers follow this example, and it is building business on support for the software rather than sales of the software.

[gggg sssss]

Oracle needs a clue

Oracle - the most overhyped, overpriced POS on the market, was great in the days of the mainframe. In the 21st century, anyone who wants to pursue Linux and open source,would need rocks in their collective heads to get into bed with Oracle rather than, say, mySQL. Mercenary Oracle wants to support a free operating system so that they can absorb the budget previously allocated for servers for themselves. Greed and nothing else. Oracle is the antithesis of everything that open source stands for.

[FutureGuy]

Oracle did prove one thing.

That open source is a very bad business model for anyone investing in it. Red Hat?s share?s just plummeted by 26% since investors realized duh any competitor could just create a clone, the source code is right there. If you still have doubts just refer to the financial performance of companies like Oracle and Microsoft Vs that of Sun and Red Hat.

[kevinclosson]

Redhat needs to prove cred too

Personally I think the fact that some Open Source business was stolen from Redhat is no big surprise. I've blogged about the patent remifications of this on my blog :

kevinclosson.wordpress.com

[WJeansonne]

Linux is Feeling the Heat of a Capitalist World

This is very enjoyable to watch. Just as many predicted Linux would inevitably run up against legitimate software patents. Moreover, it would also become bifurcated as much as its cousin UNIX (or hijacked clone as some view it). The only good out of all of this is that it's caused Microsoft to become non-complacent and begin to offer much needd re-vitalized and lean (as opposed to bloated) "Live" software.