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How Oracle kills open source

« H E Yakov Fain :: email
posted Thursday, 26 October 2006

First, read this news by Reuters. Now let's think real quick about what has happened.

Red Hat as well as many other open source vendors give you the software for free, but to pay the bills they sell professional support for their services. Usually open source vendors charge premium for support and training, to make up for the lack of the licensing cash flow.

Larry Ellison, as a role-model-capitalist does not care about the bills that Red Hat needs to pay. He decided to kill them by anouncing half-price technical support for Red Hat Linux.

Many companies that  create open source software may fall into the same trap. 

That's all folks. That's all Red Hat.

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comments (4)


1. SAM left...
Friday, 27 October 2006 7:41 am

Dear Yakov,

  • What drives Oracle?

  • Fear and Greed.In that order.


2. Doug K left...
Tuesday, 31 October 2006 7:33 pm

hmm, according to the RHL FAQ on this, Oracle is going to fork the code.. so it won't be RHL anymore, it'll be Oracle/Linux. Oracle doesn't have the time or money to properly maintain a Linux distro. Nice try from Larry, but I can't see it working.


3. me left...
Wednesday, 1 November 2006 9:31 am

Would you trust a company that comes 39 out of 41 in support (http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/sec/CIO_research5_1205.pdf) or number 2?


4. Cameron Purdy left...
Friday, 3 November 2006 8:38 am

Hi Yakov -

While Oracle is definitely playing hardball and being nasty, it's notable that RedHat did not write Linux either, and have benefited from a very large community of contributors, only a very few of which have benefited monetarily from RedHat, either by stock or by employment.

The proof is in the pudding: Whether Oracle provides quality product and service, not the effect on RedHat. If they do, then it is good for Open Source. If not, then it likely will have little impact anyway, since no one will care.

As for RedHat, they'll be fine as long as they remain competitive price-wise and as long as their support and other services are top-notch. There have been a lot of complaints about RedHat's pricing and the relatively low quality of all but their top tier support services (which is unfortunately all too common a complaint about software companies in general). Maybe this is the event that kicks them in the pants and makes them shine, or maybe it's the event that makes them irrelevant -- only they can determine that outcome.

I have no desire to see Oracle put RedHat out of business, any more than I'd like all my software to come from Microsoft so that I can wait five years again for an upgrade to my browser.

(As a side-note: Ubuntu is a much bigger threat to RedHat. Probably 1/4 of our customers are already moving to Ubuntu, with another 25% seriously considering it -- or at least talking like they are seriously considering it.)

Peace.