Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore [LWN.net]

Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore

Posted Oct 19, 2010 16:56 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639)
In reply to: Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore by ewan
Parent article: Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore

It's interesting in that this is exactly the same _proprietary_ refrain that Shuttleworth has levelled at Red Hat bacl in 2007, but its being used for pretty much the opposite effect here.

Whereas Shuttleworth has tried to paint Red Hat as proprietary to standup Canonical as the more community friendly, less proprietary, better alternative. Here we have an analyst using the exact same name-calling to make the argument that Oracle is going to be the _more_ proprietary better alternative. That Oracle is going to be better at supporting customers because they aren't going to play nicey-nice and are going to drive customization and differentiation deep into the kernel for the benefit of Oracle customers.

Name calling aside, I think its refreshing to see a company's intentions so forthrightly stated. "Oracle: We are going to unabashedly fork the linux kernel and you'll love paying us for it!" Though the number of referrals to existing vendors undermines the message a bit.

-jef

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Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore

Posted Oct 20, 2010 12:44 UTC (Wed) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link] (1 responses)

Thanks for bringing the subject matter back to Shuttleworth and Ubuntu, Jef. Whatever would we do without you?

Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore

Posted Oct 20, 2010 16:55 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Firstly, I didn't actually say Ubuntu. I'd appreciate it if you didn't put words in my mouth, I might stub a toe on them later.

Secondly, I made an honest effort to find when other people have made the claim this sort of public posting in the past that painted Red Hat as proprietary. I honestly did not find anything since the mention from 2007 ascribed to the author I cited. I pointed out there year of the quote to show that its not a commonly held idea nor is it novel.

But I can go further back...back to 2004 when Sun's Jonathan Schwartz tried to do the same sort of name-calling. It didn't stick then either.

There is a history of Red Hat competitors (and their supporters or surrogates) attempting to paint Red Hat as proprietary. First with Sun, then with Canonical, now it seems with Oracle. I guess for completeness I should make an effort to find a historical reference from someone from Novell making the claim as well.

-jef