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IBM to Oracle - You Can't Buy Open Source

Posted by Zonk on Thu Apr 20, 2006 01:54 PM
from the hee dept.
Linux Business
mrops writes "CNET has up a short article about IBM's reaction to Oracle's recent acquisitions. From the article: 'Handy was responding to comments made by Oracle CEO Ellison to the Financial Times, where he said that he wanted Oracle to control a 'full stack' of software, including the Linux operating system. If Oracle did try to buy a Linux distributor, such as Red Hat or Novell, Handy said 'we'd stick to our strategy of having two or more independent distributors and have to wait and see what happens.'" It should be pointed out, as noted in yesterday's Slashback, that Ellison has no intentions of purchasing Red Hat.
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IBM to Oracle - You Can't Buy Open Source 50 Comments More /

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  • Return Serve (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2006, @01:58PM (#15167260)
    Oracle to IBM: No, but we can buy the people.
    • Problem solved. No I don't know the relative values of the companies.

      • Re:Oracle buys IBM (Score:5, Informative)

        by Kadin2048 (468275) <slashdot@kadin.xoxy@net> on Thursday April 20 2006, @03:07PM (#15167872) Homepage Journal
        Not sure if that was a joke, but just in case it wasn't:

        Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL)
        • Market Cap $73.07 Billion USD,
        • revenue $13.41 B
        • gross profit $9.15 B
        • Employees 49,872


        International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM)
        • Market Cap $128.6 Billion USD,
        • revenue $91.13 B
        • gross profit $36.53 B
        • Employees 341,750

        So if either company were to buy the other, it would be IBM acquiring Oracle, but I think Oracle's probably too big for them to swallow in any event.

        Oracle is certainly the more profitable company though, in terms of profit/revenue, but then again they don't really manufacture anything, while IBM still makes and sells a lot of stuff.
        • Well its not unknown for companies to buy bigger ones, but that happens when the management of the bigger company are screwing up so badly that shareholders are willing to sell for shares in the new combined business.

          Buying something like Oracle would also not fit in with IBM's strategy of expanding services - their last big acquisition was a consultancy, and I bet their next one will be as well.

  • Headline makes the wrong assumption (Score:5, Insightful)

    by $RANDOMLUSER (804576) on Thursday April 20 2006, @01:59PM (#15167267)
    Oracle doesn't want to buy Open Source, they want to buy installed bases.

    • Re:Headline makes the wrong assumption (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ctrl+Alt+De1337 (837964) on Thursday April 20 2006, @02:04PM (#15167309) Homepage Journal
      This is important. They want the installed base and the community. Oracle certainly has the resources to make a new distro from scratch if they wanted, but it takes time to build up a loyal following and by extension an installed base. Certainly a lot of people would try a brand-new Oracle distro, but who knows how many would stick with it if their favorite package(s) was/were not available? Larry likes control, so basing a new one off someone else's distro is right out.
      • On the other hand, an owner like Oracle could kill a loyal following. Especially if they lost the focus that Novell has in making a solid enterprise desktop (as well as all the other little projects Novell has going). Why would Oracle care about any of that stuff? I know I would stop using a distro if Oracle bought it.

        -matthew

    • Re:Headline makes the wrong assumption (Score:4, Funny)

      by gstoddart (321705) on Thursday April 20 2006, @02:56PM (#15167791) Homepage
      Oracle doesn't want to buy Open Source, they want to buy installed bases.

      All your installed bases are belong to us?

      Doesn't have the same ring to it; it'll never catch on. :-P

  • Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RingDev (879105) on Thursday April 20 2006, @02:03PM (#15167300) Homepage Journal
    Why can't a company buy an open source project? Bring the developers on board, retain controlling rights, enforce licensing, etc... All OS means is that the code is published. Contrary to (supposed) popular believe, software, in and of itself, has no desire to be 'free.'

    -Rick
    • The licensing that the open source software exists under says that everyone else can simply take that code and do what they want as long as they provide the source. There is no way for Oracle to take it away is what they were saying. I don't think they are trying to do that anyway. I think, like many others, that they simply want to step into the game with an installed base to get an advantage.
    • Well, for one thing the GPL would make that difficult, but if the existing license is like the BSD license than I suppose it could happen. A little like what apple did, yes?

      sahuaro
      • If it is GPL, but the copyright is retained by a small number of people who are willing to sell their rights to it, then it can be taken closed-source. Of course, anyone can fork from the last GPL'd version. That's essentially what happened with SSH if I understand that correctly.
        • If it is GPL, but the copyright is retained by a small number of people who are willing to sell their rights to it, then it can be taken closed-source. Of course, anyone can fork from the last GPL'd version. That's essentially what happened with SSH if I understand that correctly.

          SSH was under a freer license than GPL, but did use a GPL library. Today OpenSSH (a derivative of SSH) contains no GPL code. Have a look at the OpenSSH history [openssh.org]

    • Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tdvaughan (582870) on Thursday April 20 2006, @02:24PM (#15167486) Homepage
      One of the most important factors to an Open Source project's success is the community around it. Piss off the community and the project will be forked. Bug reports, feature requests, forums and mailing lists will dry up or dissolve into flamewars while the forked project takes developer interest away and eventually becomes incompatible with the original.

    • Bssst... Thank you for playing (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "All OS means is that the code is published"

      You are only 1/10th correct.

      Wrong- Even Microsoft admitted this was wrong.

      Now go read up and become an educated Slashbot.
      http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php [opensource.org]

      1) Free Distibution
      2) Source code
      3) Derived works
      4) Integrity of The Author's Source Code
      5) No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
      6) No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
      7) Distribution of License
      8) License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
      9) License Must Not Restrict Other Software
      10)Lice

    • Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Cyclops (1852) <rms@1407 . o rg> on Thursday April 20 2006, @03:58PM (#15168374) Homepage
      Contrary to (supposed) popular believe, software, in and of itself, has no desire to be 'free.'
      Software has no desire. Software is a set of specific rules that results in a specific and predictable effect. The code of such software, as was written, is covered by copyright, and software has copyright licenses.

      Free Software, contrary to what you seem to believe, is about providing users with certain freedoms:
      0. the freedom to run the program for any purpose
      1. the freedom to study the program and modify it according to your needs
      2. the freedom to distribute copies
      3. the freedom to publish modified versions

      So who has desire for theses Freedoms? Software? Don't be laughable. It's PEOPLE who desire it!

      Any software license that removes theses freedoms from users is disrespecting them. It's a license written with control in mind. Control of the user and what he may or may not be able to do.

      I for one, only use Free Software (for quite a long time, now), but in the beggining I thought only the quality of "open source" mattered. Then I learned better...
      • "Free Software, contrary to what you seem to believe"

        I made no comment on Free Software. I only stated (as we appear to agree on) that the software itself has no desire to be free.

        I think Free Software is neat. I think it is going to play a continued roll in the market of software development. I don't think, nor do I want all software to become free software.

        The point I was trying to specificly make is that a company absolutely CAN buy Open Source. Not to be confused with Free Software.

        -Rick

        • I don't think, nor do I want all software to become free software.

          Why do you think people don't deserve freedom? Advocate that all software should be Free Software: that way not only you don't force anyone, but you may help achieving the nice end result that all software eventually becomes Free Software.

          Remember, saying you don't want all software to be Free Software is like saying you don't want all humans to have freedom (I'm excluding criminals doing time for obvious reasons).

          • "Why do you think people don't deserve freedom?"

            Absolutely, and significantly more than software deserves freedom.

            "Remember, saying you don't want all software to be Free Software is like saying you don't want all humans to have freedom (I'm excluding criminals doing time for obvious reasons)."

            Just the opposite. If all software is free (as in beer) then software developers are NOT free. Free (as in speach) software can give some software developers MORE freedom while giving other developers LESS freedom. Th
            • Why do you keep confusing free beer with free speech? It does seem borderline intentional.

              I'm explicitly talking about freedom and not about price or being paid to develop Free Software.

              You do seem to want to remove freedoms from users... at least on some software... do you have a special undisclosed interest?

            • first of all, the right to modify software is utterly useless to most people, because they don't have the skills.

              Freedom of press is also utterly useless to most people because they're not journalists. Do you wish to remove Freedom of press?

              as another poster already mentioned, if you mandate that software be free, you are sacrificing the freedom of one group of people "developers" for the freedom of another "users."

              Well, As you should be able to understand since you write english, I'm not mandating but

  • You can only rent it for a short period of time.

    I could have put something more sexual in the subject, but decided not to.

  • [IBM senior vice president Steve] Mills said Oracle has stuck to industry standards but does not have a long track record of involvement in open-source communities.

    That would mean becoming innovative, opening themselves up to new ideas, new ways of thinking. Can't have that! Then they might actually be able to compete with Microsoft.

    Hmmmmm... my sarcasm detector is going off...

    • They might be able to compete with Microsoft?

      I am not sure what you mean there. Are you implying that Microsoft inovates? Could you give me an example of this. I honestly can't think of one thing Microsoft has inovated. I can give countless examples of times Microsoft has tried to copy a competitors product, but it was far worse and then just bundled it in with the OS for "free" to just kill out their competion.

      Now I am by no way a huge fan of Oracle, or IBM, but at least both of them will work with oth
      • I am not sure what you mean there. Are you implying that Microsoft inovates? Could you give me an example of this. I honestly can't think of one thing Microsoft has inovated. I can give countless examples of times Microsoft has tried to copy a competitors product, but it was far worse and then just bundled it in with the OS for "free" to just kill out their competion.

        No, I don't mean Microsoft innovates. I mean Larry Ellison is trying to compete with Microsoft and is so far having no luck. I've said this

        • Oracle gains nothing now by buying into Linux but growing pains and the probable destruction of whatever Linux group they suck up

          Not at all. They push Oracle on Linux in a big way.

          They would do well to have a distro that they controlled so that they could tightly integrate the OS dev with their product development. Hell, it'd be nice to find a Linux distro that would run Oracle out of the box without having to do any tunings or tweakings. It would also be nice if there were a Linux distro that had Oracle
          • They would do well to have a distro that they controlled so that they could tightly integrate the OS dev with their product development.

            I don't know about them but I want to run whatever distribution I choose. If you want to install Oracle amd64 on Ubuntu you have to make the installer detect RedHat otherwise it refuses to run. I found this more annoying than all the other problems I had during the install.

            • Yeah... it's pretty trivial to "fake out" the installer, if you want. So sure, you can try to install it on any OS you want... they're not stopping you. (just be sure that the distro you set it to in order to fake out the installer matches the dependency/library set and/or install rules for the distro you're actually using). But installing it and getting it to run well/stable on an unsupported distro are two different things.

              Just as it's your choice of what OS you want to run it on, it's their choice as
            • But why waste time with distros that don't have official support services for business? After all, this represents their demographic. I've personally NEVER seen an Oracle install on Linux (that was paid for) that didn't have a full-on OS and hardware support contract in place. I've also never seen any real desire or need to run a different distro in those environments.

              Are you a potential, paying client of theirs? Have you told them of your desire to run a different distro? What are your reasons for wan
      • "Are you implying that Microsoft inovates?"

        I think MS has fooled a lot of people (including you) into thinking that innovation is the same as creation.

        Does MS innovate? Absolutely.

        Does MS create? That's the real question.
    • A sarcasm detector? Oh, that's a really useful inven*POOF*

  • Take Ellison with a grain of salt... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ryan Amos (16972) on Thursday April 20 2006, @02:22PM (#15167466)
    When Ellison says "We're not interested in RedHat / Novell right now," he means RIGHT NOW. Share prices rise on acquisition news and fall when those acquisitions fail to materialize. If he says "We're not buying RedHat," then the recent gains RedHat has seen because of the oracle takeover talk will probably go away (AFAIK there are no other suitors.)

  • Oracle, IBM need to improve install and daemon mgt (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stanwirth (621074) on Thursday April 20 2006, @02:31PM (#15167542)

    Both Oracle and IBM have got it wrong. If you've ever tried to install:

    • DB2
    • Oracle
    • WebSphere
    on a RedHat or SuSE , the first thing you notice is...both Oracle and IBM tried to make the installation easy by putting a shitty JAVA GUI on the thing. Two problems with this: it forces you to have to install JAVA and X windows eithier on your server (in the DMZ? I don't THINK so!) or to have to install just the X windows client bits on your sever along with Java...and then bring in a laptop that you attach to your server on a temporary network while the network is offline, yada yada yada....

    WHY NOT JUST WRITE A FRICKIN' RPM???? HUH? LIKE, ALONG WITH A PROPER DAEMON SCRIPT SO YOU CAN START AND STOP ORACLE, DB2, WebSphere, Etc Etc Etc in a single command-line, in the STANDARD LINUX WAY???? D'ya THINK????? DUH!

    A couple of people have tried to write an open-source RPM/daemon script suite around these packages, but of course -- then a new version of the proprietary DB/web service comes out.

    And both Oracle and IBM are rolling in dough, why would anyone do this for them for free?

    If a sysadmin got the freedom to run Open Source anything, they'll switch to PhP/MySQL and/or PostGreSQL (depending on whether they need triggers or not) soon enough ANYWAY

    Oracle could drastically increase its install base in the Linux community just by demonstrating some rudimentary competence in the area of standard Linux server systems software management.

  • I suspect what we have here is at least as much a misunderstanding as it is a real disagreement. The issue is what you mean by "control" over something. I think Oracle is thinking in terms of what I'd call positive control -- i.e. having direct input into its development, strategic direction, etc. I suspect IBM is talking more in terms of negative control -- i.e. being able to control what others do with the software.

    If that's the case, they're both basically right -- Oracle certainly can buy companies (f

  • They get a lot of good packages with the purchase. Are they going to integrate them into Oracle's product offerings? I'm personally not very convinced that they should be using SuSE for an Oracle Linux Server type product. It's a good desktop, but pretty bloated. It would seem to me that the best alternative would be to get a light-weight distribution for free and build on that. Oracle already has an installed base, and I'm sure they could get people to use Oracle Linux on a server that is going ot be purel
  • Oracle, like IBM, Sun and others are still all experimenting with the ways that they can make FOSS development work for them. Oracle is not likely to try to "own" any distribution of Linux, there's no profit or future in that. Instead they, like everyone else, want to set the open standards. Leading on open standards is leading the competiton. Rebecca Henderson, Professor of Management at MIT, has a a great talk on the new hyper-competitive world of open source. You can view it for free through MIT's O
  • Didn't IBM just buy this opensource project: http://geronimo.apache.org/ [apache.org] and make it http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/websphere/ [sourceforge.net]? 1) Take open source software 2) Brand it 3) Profit?
  • From: Larry Ellison
    To: IBM

    SUBJ: Your note to us about Open Source

    Dear IBM,

    Piss off. I have two Mig jets and a really big-ass boat. I can buy anything I want.

    Oraclistically Yours,

    Larry

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