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Red Hat Software Businesses

Oracle and Red Hat E-Commerce Partnership 90

Posted by Roblimo from the packaged-Linux-solutions-even-bosses-can-love dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "There's a press release out that says Red Hat and Oracle are teaming up to take on e-commerce. They have outlined bold initiatives to add support for IA64, a journaled filesystem and high avaliability. Even more they say it will include Motif, but they still say all additions will fit with the GPL." It's basically Oracle 8i teamed with an "optimized" version of Red Hat. Sounds nice. This joint product could have major impact on the e-commerce software marketplace if it works as promised. Claimed shipping date is mid-December.
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Oracle and Red Hat E-Commerce Partnership More

Oracle and Red Hat E-Commerce Partnership

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  • you mean Oracle/Sun/AOL and _linux_. I think that tempers things out a bit don't you think?
  • but they can't open source Motif. And if this is big news for Red Hat then it's bad news for GTK
  • A better question is has anyone managed to Install 8i on Linux? I have a PII 350 with a 2.5 Gig Linux partition and 64 Meg of Ram and yet I can't even get the 8i installer to run (with the Blackdown JDK 1.1.7 - ./runInstaller says "Initializing jre from /usr/local/jre/bin/jre. Please wait..." then nothing...back to the bash$ prompt). Maybe this is good - maybe Oracle or RedHat will contribute to creating a decent jdk/jre for linux so all the fancy tools will run...maybe they will even include one in the distribution/installation. (Do I sound frustrated yet?) BTW, I was able to install 8i Enterprise on the NT partition of the same machine with no problems. I guess my point is I hope this "specialization" improves installation and maintenance hassles
  • What does Motif provide that other window managers and complete enviroments (GNOME etc) don't provide?

    Well, Motif is a GUI toolkit, not just a window manager (but includes mwm) or environment (but these days includes CDE).

    As for what it provides that GTK or Qt don't: compatibility with the source code of zillions of apps (many for in-house use) originally developed on one of the proprietary unices, and compatibility with the expertise of the zillions of long-time Unix programmers who wrote those apps. And while Motif itself may not be open-source, Lesstif [lesstif.org] is, and is completely compatible with all the Motif programs I had lying around to try it with (none of which use the more obscure corners of Motif that Lesstif hasn't got to yet).

    Back in the earlier GUI toolkit wars (OpenLook vs Motif) I favored OpenLook, but Motif won out and I've used it for years. If I'm developing an app even for Linux I'll use {Mo,Less}tif as first choice because it does the job and I can't be bothered (yet) to learn Qt or GTK.

    There's also a hell of a lot more documentation (books, etc.) on the Motif API and Motif style guides, etc, (all applicable of course to Lesstif) than there is for either GTK or Qt.

    Qt and GTK have their own advantages, of course, but the "installed base" of {Mo,Less}tif apps and expertise (and adjuncts like GUI builders) is too large for it to be casually dismissed.

    And Motif is vital for any enterprise who wants to move their legacy Unix apps to Linux.
  • Of course there are many more applications for a database backed web site than ecommerce, but if you are talking about an expensive high end database like Oracle I think you need some revenue to justify the cost of Oracle.

    Oracle is easy to justify if you have a bunch of folks on staff who are already trained in Oracle. You've got to remember that people are almost always more expensive than hardware or software.

    Earlier this year, my company budgeted for a pair of IBM H70s running under HACMP for an internal, mission-critical Oracle database application. We're getting toward the end of the year, looking to buy but the bean counters want to save some money and go with Microsoft SQL on NT. (Ugh!)

    We've just about got them convinced that Oracle under Linux would be a better solution. The primary reason? We've got half a dozen folks here who have been to Oracle school and another two that are actualy Oracle DBAs. Sure, they could learn SQL 7 but why bother? They already know Oralce.

    The same goes for MySQL, MSQL, etc. Yeah, they could learn them but they already know Oracle inside and out.

    Oracle on Linux is a wonderful thing because we already know Oracle and our Unix support staff (me {blush}) is better equipped to support a mission-critical application under Linux than anyone on staff is equipped to support the same database under NT.

    Well, that, and a dual P-II with similar disk space and RAM is a tenth the cost of an IBM RS/6000 box and about half as much as NT on the same hardware.

    InitZero

  • I think it's easier to work with Oracle
  • Oracle on Linux, gee what a great idea! Once Larry gets his foot in the door your at his mercy. As for reliability - Wow!! Super !! - Just ask Ebay. How many times have they been down lately?? Things to ponder, if you know what I mean.
  • I am dot completely disturbed by iT
      • The poster said that Oracle was going to drop all versions of UNIX except Solaris and Linux next year, and then maybe Solaris after that.

      There's no way that's true.

    I agree that it's unlikely that this would happen "in a year". I do think that Ellison might use Linux to pressure the UNIX vendors to pay more for supporting their systems. Especially the more marginal ones.

    Longer term than a year, I don't think it's unlikely at all that Oracle would drop UNIX platforms in favor of Linux.

    I think Ellison would love to be more in control of his own destiny and Linux makes that more possible. With Linux, Oracle can create the servers they want, rather than just aligning their goals with the goals of hardware/OS manufacturers. Again, I point to that Oracle Server with no OS idea that Oracle was pushing last year as evidence.

  • I agree..

    I have had a chance to see both in person, and it is almost scarry the bloodlust that he has for Billyboy.

    When I look at the costs of Oracle8i on linux, I about start to laugh. They are difinately after companies that are with a lot of venture capital. I believe that Microsoft or IBM.. Sybase even provide a better 'Real World' solution .. cost and performance...

    Unforutnately , not evereyon works for a Silicon Valley startup with deep pockets....

    I see Oracle/Sun solutions now similar to the clamp IBM had in the 80's.

    Nobody gets fired for buying Oracle/Sun. ... or at least no investors mind.


    Oh well... comes back down the the old saying... Be carefull what you wish for.

    Microsoft / Bill is bad... but who is to say that Oracle/Sun/AOL .. etc... couldn't be worst if given the chance?

    $.02
  • So will the raw filesystem support be included in 2.4.0? This would sure be very useful for Oracle and any other DB for that matter. Also, will Linux finally suport > 1 Gig of RAM on Alpha?
  • >>I'm starting to hate Red Hat more than MS. RH makes money purely on other peoples work.

    Oh, please! How is this different from all other distributions (with the exception of Debian)?

    Besides, isn't this what the GPL allows them to do? Where in the GPL does it say that you can only use the code as long as you don't make money on it?

    If you don't like that RedHat and other companies make money on your hard work (are you actually developing anything or are you just the normal non-developing RedHat basher?), don't release it under the GPL. Put it under QPL or NPL or SCPL or whatever. But don't complain about it!!!
  • >>It is in things like this that we see the true genius of the GPL. This should finally shut up those people who keep critisizing the GPL. Does
    anyone really think these companies would release the source coed to these apps if they weren't forced too?

    The true genius of GPL is to force other people to use this license?

    What happened to choice?

    Far being for me to look at a BSD license that says, you can link to my program, and my choice of license won't affect your choice of license. Oh, no. Sure my license is open and anyone can contribute and change and do whatever they want, BUT the moral thing is to force you to use my license when you want to use any of my program's features, even if you don't want to take my program and make it propriatery, just by linking to it.

    Yup, the RMS is a moral genius.
  • speaking of this, i recieved an email from redhat orders thanking me for my recent order. I thought someone was either being nice or playing a joke. Just a couple days ago I recieved Oracle 8i for linux. I never ordered it and I highly doubt anyone else did. Anyone else have this happen? heh. Interesting....
  • Well Motif is proprietary. Since most other distros won't have Motif, there is no choice but Redhat if you want Oracle. This causes fragmentation in the linux market.
  • What about compatibility with the other linux distros that don't (because they can't-not open/free) have Motif/CDE?
  • Only tier-1? Oracle have only recently stated they will make Linux a tier-1 OS.
  • I know :) That's why I said read/write
  • But if Oracle is based on Motif (and many people will want Oracle-you know that) people will have no choice but to use Redhat.
  • > What happened to choice?

    You've got a choice. Don't use GPL'd software
    if you don't like the GPL. Got it?

  • Normal Red Hat Linux will continue not having Motif.
    This is just for the oracle edition.
  • ..would they fit Motif 2.1 into GPL?

    Motif should die anyway...
  • ...for anything other than playing? I mean, are all of the downloads that Oracle trumpets for real use, or is it from geeks (like me) who downloaded it to play around some?
  • Although, I am a bit uneasy about motif--mostly cause i dont like it.
  • ReiserFS seems to be the baby of SuSE... is it going to be ext3? (I was under the impression that ext3 wasn't sponsored by any corporate entity, part of the reason why Mr. T'so hasn't had time to round up btree inode code and such).

    Can someone 'in the know' identify which jfs will be used? I don't really have time right now to dig through linux-kernel and extract the various business relationships from the participants emails ;) It'd be useful to know ahead of time though.

    Go go kernel boys. Fix that buffer problem so I can start using a JFS on those bigass 80gb software RAID devices.

    --
    rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

  • After reading the courts findings of fact, it looks like a lot of companies that have been hurt by microsoft in the past, arn't terribly excited about the idea of waiting for the courts decision, and instead hit them where it hurts. :) By the time they do make a decision, who knows, it may be too little too late!!! Hurrah for *REAL* innovation!
  • I highly doubt that Motif will be GPL'ed. This is probably just an example of miscommunication.
  • For example, check out delta.is [delta.is]. It's a pharmaceutical company and uses Oracle database to deliver dynamic web contents from a system that I participated in developing. My current company (oracle.is [oracle.is]) have commited in supporting Oracle on Linux, although we still use Sun Enterprises for all the heavy-duty stuff... Jón

  • Bad quote (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    E-commerce without e-service is e-suicide

    Jeez, I can't believe someone actually said this.
  • "All changes to the Red Hat Linux OS will be delivered freely to the entire open source community under the GNU General Public License (GPL)"

    This says nothing about additional software added to the system, such as Motif. I'd doubt that we'll see a free version of Motif anytime soon. Not that I'd especially want to, except maybe to run the dynamically-linked version of Netscape. Then again, Mozilla's doing just fine w/o Motif.

    Personally, I'm more interested in the "Java Support" the article mentions. Kudos to the Blackdown and the Kaffe people, no doubt, but they can always use more help.
  • Well, there is a free version of Motif, namely Lesstif. It's apparently about on-par with Motif, except that it's apparently missing a few of the more obscure widgets and has no means of using pure Motif's particular binary flavor of compiled UIL (User Interface Language, a neat interface-design scripting language Motif has), though compiled UIL isn't really a major concern for free software projects anyway since, well, the UIL source would theoretically be available and compilable from there. :)

    I'm with you regarding Java though. Servlets are godly for having clustered high-availability webservers with heterogenous systems. You can have a cluster of webservers where each is running a different CPU and OS and you only need what amounts to one compiled CGI binary for everything. (Say what you will, but I'd prefer to have a bytecompiled Java CGI than a runtime-interpreted PERL one. Yes, I know PERL can be bytecompiled too.) Oh, and it'll also be nice to be able to see all the glitzy web stuff which everyone seems to be using now without my system crawling and my browser crashing...
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • It is in things like this that we see the true genius of the GPL. This should finally shut up those people who keep critisizing the GPL. Does anyone really think these companies would release the source coed to these apps if they weren't forced too?

    Some of it is the open-source buzzword (I am begining to think that companies will give away cash if it lets them claim they are buzzword X) but without the GPL they would release their source under horribly incompatable and unusable liscenses.

    Soon we may pass the critical point where it is more economically advantageous to develop using the free code already out there than to keep your code base propietory.

  • Good! (Score:2)

    by jonr ( 1130 )
    I work in 99% oracle environment, and I'm very excited to see what this could bring us. Right now our choice of enterprise-class system for Oracle DBs are Sun Enterprise servers. Expensive, but real workhorses. If RedHat can make "optimized for Oracle" Linux system, I would have to give Linux x86 box a serious look as a cheaper alternative to the Sun boxes, without loosing too much performance.
    Good news!
    Jon
  • For that matter, are there any places I could find some information comparing the various JFS projects for Linux? I know that there are a few (ext3, XFS, and a few others) but that's all I know about them - that they're being worked on. Even some information on theoretical comparisons regarding design philosophies would be really nice...

    Hm, in that vein, I wonder if Be could be coerced into releasing BeFS as free. I mean, they've borrowed plenty of stuff from Linux (mostly shells, commandline utilities and LILO); one could argue that they owe the Linux community something in return, and from what I've seen, BeFS is very robust, stable, future-compatible (mmm, 64-bit addressing...), and very UNIXy and then some. It certainly has all the functionality that ext2 has, including the parts which nobody uses. :)
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • I downloaded it to access the client libraries to compile DBD::Oracle. I suspect most people download it for that reason. However having said that I am going to use the server on Linux for real development "real soon now".

  • Oracle 8i with an optimized version of RedHat? I think this is great for the acceptance of linux in the server market. But I doubt it's usefulness for linux in general.

    E-commerce is booming. There's no doubt about that. But most companies entering the arena at this point don't need Oracle 8i. They don't serve 10000+ transactions a day, and most of them never will.

    It's nice to see large companies giving attention to other large companies. It's great to see that development is going on. But I'm afraid that this is only serving a few companies, while leaving the smaller parties out in the cold.

    Linux is being commercialized. The people who started all this are being left in the cold. The ones that benefit today are not from the open source movement. How many of them have ever been close to a supercomputer? All these developments don't encourage free software. They encourage greed.


    Feel free to moderate this down. I just wanted this out.

    ----------------------------------------------
  • Note: I don't like BSD license because other people can take my code and make it properiatery. I don't like GPL because it forces other people to choose my license if they want to link to my program (think CORBA, COM).

    A compromise license should be created (similar to LGPL).
  • Do you really think that Oracle Corp. will give as much support to the Linux community as it has to the Sun (pronounced only tier-1 oracle vendor) community. If you do, then some of the "blue smoke" in those sparc chips must have leaked into the atmosphere and lodged into your brain.

    --Cleric
  • IBM did some sort of survey and came up with the conclusion that there were no more than 10,000 web sites that did actual e-commerce on a daily basis. Many of those may be linked into an outsourced service like Yahoo, web911 etc.

    All this makes me really wonder what the real market for something like this is.

    Of course there are many more applications for a database backed web site than ecommerce, but if you are talking about an expensive high end database like Oracle I think you need some revenue to justify the cost of Oracle.

    I am working on a small web based business myself, and the business model I've come up with indicates that if I get 50 tranactions a day I'll be able to buy a beach front house on Diamond Head in three years. I can't imagine why I would want Oracle for this. It's much more effective for me to outsource the financial transactions.

  • VERITAS has agreements with both Red Hat and Oricle to provide storage backup. Storage backup will be necessary for any ecommerce operation ('cuz computers do go down). If it wasn't VERITAS, it would have to be Legato. Someone has to make the choice.
    Mike Eckardt
    meckardt@yahoo.nospam.com
    http://www.geocities.com/meckardt
  • Yes, and there is one simple reason why:

    Ellison hates Gates.

    Sometimes business comes down to personalities. Ellison would do anything to get at Gates, and if he sees Linux as the way to do that, you can bet that he'll back Linux with pretty much anything at his disposal.

    Remember that the relationship with Sun came out of the whole Java/Network Computer idea, the goal of which was, of course, to break the Wintel monopoly.
  • Oracle does *not* require Motif.
    Besides, any other distributor can do the same - bundle their distribution with Oracle and some Motif.

  • Re:Good! (Score:4)

    by JordanH ( 75307 ) on Thursday November 11, 1999 @03:14AM (#1543547) Homepage Journal
    I saw a Comment on Slashdot awhile back that I thought was interesting. The poster said that Oracle was going to drop all versions of UNIX except Solaris and Linux next year, and then maybe Solaris after that.

    I think Ellison has always chaffed at being pulled in different directions by the OS vendors. Witness the "Raw Iron" (is that what it was called?) initiative last year. Whatever happened to the idea of Oracle servers with "no OS"? I couldn't find any news that was newer than a year old when I looked a few months back.

    The Unix vendors currently pay a lot to make sure that the latest Oracle is available on their platform in a timely fashion. As the Linux market grows, Oracle will be able to extract more and more from the Unix vendors to ensure support.

    If this scenario plays out, then IBM decide to drop it and push DB2 and we might see some of the Unix vendors ban together in support of mSQL/mySQL/Postgres (and/or Sybase/Informix?) in a defensive move.

    It would be interesting.

  • Yep, the last company I worked for did commercial web system based on Linux and Oracle. Nice combination. Once you have ORacle installed, it works rock solid with good performance. That was the Oracle 8.0.4 not the 8i. The only thing we had trouble with was the context cartridge. Now that it is integrated in 8i, it might have improved...

    We also worked with both Informix "options" (not under Linux though) and that database is full of excitements and surprises, if you know what I mean.

  • For those in the Linux community that are used to paying little to nothing for software, be prepared for sticker-shock once you start using Oracle on your server. Oracle must take this into account for linux-platform servers.

    Mr. Ellison has always wanted to hurt Mr. Gates and Microsoft in anyway possible. From the initial NC fiasco to Raw Iron, to this. Remember, Larry wants desktops to go away, that everyone would have a browser served by application providers running Oracle. For all the linux users who don't like Billy, wait to you get a load of Larry....

  • Stephen Tweedie is employed by Redhat. That kinda counts as sponsership.
  • This is irrelevant since all the changes to redhat will be released under the GPL. And since this is one development a lot of capable people working with linux will want to be on top of, there will be channels to get help through even if Oracle Corp. itself doesn't give the same amount of support.
  • The way there might be a GPLed Motif might be via improving Lesstif into providing Motif 2.1 functionality. That doesn't seem believable in the sort term, so I'm inclined instead to consider:
    • Motif isn't part of the kernel, and thus doesn't "have" to be GPLed.

      That is not consistent with the the sorts of things RHAT has been releasing, though.

    • Perhaps RHAT has been talking with the Open Group, and may have permission to release a GPLed release of Real Motif.

      Also a bit "out there" as theories go...

    • Perhaps the press release is somehow wrong.

      Journalists never make mistakes, though, right?

    There's really no compelling answer here...
  • Um, I don't know if they would even want to deal with a JFS at the operating system level. In Oracle 8i, there is supposed to be a Internet File System, or iFS. Basically, allows you to use the Oracle Database to store your files, etc. You can read more about it here: http://www.oracle.com/database/options/ifs.html The possibilities with the iFS sound real promising. Oracle 8i's ability to convert sound and graphics on the fly using InterMedia are very impressive. Put that with iFS, and Linux, and watch out!

  • Oracle 8i has a custom VM built into the database engine, it does some rather cool things to bring down the overhead of each connection. By not using threads for instance for each connection.

    I am not sure they would need to use anybody else VM, also it lacks a UI implementation!

    Check out the oracle technet pages.
  • Why the comment from Veritas? I assume they're implying that Veritas will be used as part of the deal, although it wasn't explicitly mentioned. Whatever the pros and cons of Veritas (I haven't used it enough to say one way or the other), it will certainly help corporate acceptance of Linux. Veritas has strong brand recognition in the corporate arena.
  • Um, no. That would be a stupid thing to do. You obviously don't "get it". Royalty-free is an important concept of Open Source.
  • Just a speculation:
    Oracle's goal seems to be to drag people from other unices to Linux.
    So what do we need? Compatibility with those unices.
    Many other unices are using Motif/CDE as primary UIs...
  • Let's not forget this is not the only thing Red Hat is working on.
    Yes, Red Hat is very interested in servers.
    And yes, Red Hat is interested in hackers and home users, as well.
    Some projects are, will always be, and have to be for certain groups only (how do servers advance from the contributions Red Hat makes to GNOME or KDE?), because different people have different needs - and Red Hat Linux is an all-purpose OS after all.
  • If there was a passage in the GPL requiring money from companies using the code, how many companies would continue using it? For many companies, it would be just a reason to stick with Windoze. Others would consider the real alternatives to Linux, such as *BSD.
    Lastly, please don't call Red Hat proprietary software. All projects created at Red Hat are under the GPL. Red Hat contributions to preexisting projects are generally open-sourced (under the same license as the original package - we can't GPL a patch to XFree86).
    Yes, Red Hat does cooperate with companies making proprietary software (Oracle etc). We'd of course prefer to see GPLed versions of Oracle etc, but we're realistic enough to see that's not going to happen anytime soon, and don't you agree it's better to have a proprietary solution than no solution at all?
  • yes but I thought the other Oracle unix ports use Motif
  • for awhile mozilla people were working on lesstif because it wouldn't be right to use motif. But then they decided to dump it completely and use GTK because it's open sourced and more popular, backed by Redhat and Gnome. So is Redhat changing their minds again?
  • Motif isn't part of the kernel, and thus doesn't "have" to be GPLed.

    That is not consistent with the the sorts of things RHAT has been releasing, though.

    No, it isn't. It wasn't that long ago that RedHat stopped selling Motif.

  • Oracle has "teamed up" with other operating system vendors to do this in the past. For example, SGI has a partnership(s) with Oracle ( example [sgi.com]) to promote Oracle on IRIX.

    All this allows Oracle to sell more licenses, which is what they want.

    The win for Linux users is that Oracle seems (remember - this is a press release) to be pushing for more enterprise features in Linux.
  • Be is giving the linux community a desktop to run under a linux server. But BFS would be a bad choice because they made choices that make it really good for a desktop OS but not good at all for a server. Indexing attributes makes it much faster to find stuff and there are some great applications for it but it slows down creating/deleting files and directories by a great deal. This isn't such a big deal for the user who doesn't have to delete folders all the time but it's a big hit for a server. On the other hand, it would be nice if linux could read/write on BFS volumes
  • It's: "Su camión está en mi baño...", maybe you can cut&paste this :).
  • The poster said that Oracle was going to drop all versions of UNIX except Solaris and Linux next year, and then maybe Solaris after that.

    There's no way that's true.

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