Not too long ago there was much speculation that Oracle might purchase Novell in order to acquire SuSE Linux. In a newsletter about this, I said that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison had decided that it makes little sense to acquire Novell as it would come with lots of unnecessary baggage. I thought that it would be much easier to buy out another distribution or for Oracle to simply develop its own.
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Ellison, as announced last week, found a third option. He’s not developing his own and he’s not buying out another distro, he's simply going to hijack Red Hat’s Linux. Now you know why he’s often referred to as the pirate of Silicon Valley!
What Oracle announced is that it will offer something called “Unbreakable Linux” which will be, essentially, Red Hat with the Red Hat logos removed. Oracle will also steeply undercut Red Hat’s support prices. That’s right, you can buy Red Hat support from Oracle for less than you can buy it from Red Hat!
This would appear to mean that anyone considering buying Oracle’s database server – or any of the applications and services that run on it – would have an extra incentive to run it on Oracle’s “own” Linux rather than on Novell’s SuSE. That’s not a particularly good scenario for Novell, but not everyone buys Linux servers to run databases on, right?
Novell marketing honcho John Dragoon seemed to think it was no big deal. He wrote in his blog: “Having another major technology company support this reality is good. I say, ‘come on in, the water is fine’.” But could he simply be whistling in the dark?
Some were hinting at a darker, more Machiavellian scenario (well, it IS Larry Ellison we’re talking about) that Oracle’s announcement would seriously undermine Red Hat’s stock price, which did drop almost 25% on the news. Oracle could then step in and buy up Red Hat’s stock at bargain rates. I don’t know if the Securities and Exchange Commission would be able to stop that; it does seem like it should be illegal, but steering close to the wind isn’t anything new for yacht-racer Ellison. There’s also a rumor that Ellison is a bit peeved with Red Hat because it scooped up JBoss right under his nose.
Oracle distributing an unknown, derivative Linux to its applications customers will be a bit of competition to Novell. But Oracle with all of the Red Hat customer base? With that on one side and Microsoft on the other Novell would likely be crushed in between. Perhaps Novell would do well to try to make its own deal with Red Hat before that opportunity slips away.
Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be found at Virtual Quill.
Kearns is the author of two Network World Newsletters: Windows Networking Strategies, and Identity Management. Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these respective addresses: windows@vquill.com, identity@vquill.com .
Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail.
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