Oracle Drops the Bomb on Red Hat

Oracle is a large company, but the reality is larger companies have tried this before. They all failed.

If anyone is familiar with the Oracle mantra: "it only costs X, Oh well now you have spent X you might as well keep spending", it might be well advised to really think about this "half" price approach. Sure they might charge half at first, but then as they continually extend the problem the price will keep going up.

This is part of the reason that other attempts by large commercial vendors have never had the adoption rate, and by lacking the adoption rate losing the inherent benefit of Linux... the community.

The company itself is nothing without the backing of the millions of eyeballs that qa, document, and create new code. This community wants as little to do as possible with large commercial vendors because they threaten the very principles of the business.

Honestly, if Oracle is dedicated to Open Source... Open Source the Oracle applications and Database. Until they do that, they are proving they don't get Open Source, and can't be a responsible vendor. By not being a responsible vendor Enterprise customers should beware, as the price tag can be jacked at any time.

Last, this is an interesting move as far as the community goes. Red Hat has given a great deal to the community over the years. Outright attacking them might make them push database products, which from what I have seen in implemented Enterprise solutions... are more robust, and more scalable than Oracle apps.

p.s. html markup in the comments doesn't appear to work as it should.

Ruthless, yes; brilliant, no. If the only brilliance you show is to steal the work of others, debrand it, and re-sell it, that's not exactly brilliant.

Jack said:
"Oracle is a large company, but the reality is larger companies have tried this before. They all failed."

Jack, Which companies larger than Oracle have tried this strategy before?

"If the only brilliance you show is to steal the work of others, debrand it, and re-sell it, that's not exactly brilliant."

Um, isn't that what RHat is largely doing? LOL, it's funny how you OSS zealots get upset when the actual openness of that open source gets tested. I think it was both ruthless and smart. Go Larry.

Euhm ... what IT company is larger than Oracle? :)

I also think you OSS are not getting the point either. It's open source, it's free... every linux distro is "taking" the source and doing something with it, redhat too ... so what's wrong with that?

and indeed... go larry ;)

I am just studying Open Sourcing. One of the principles for open sourcing, the way I understand it, is once a company gets involved with open sourcing of the code, that company agrees to keep all that information at the same open source level.
To call Oracle brilliant by breaking them apart is like praising a gangster for his tactics.

Thank you, as I continue to learn and commend the open source people for, at least, attempting to improve the internet world by allowing people to constantly upgrade for our common good.