Open Source Weblog

Yes, it’s true that Ellison did say: "We're missing an operating system. You could argue that it makes a lot of sense for us to look at distributing and supporting Linux, it makes a lot of sense. That's the one area where Oracle isn't a player."

Yes, he did also state that the company had looked at acquiring Novell, but I'd encourage anyone to read the full transcript of the interview themselves, particularly the parts where he explains why it wouldn't make sense to acquire a Linux distributor.

"We looked at buying Novell, for instance - we look at everything, play this thing out. IBM is Novell's biggest customer. We buy Novell, IBM says thanks very much, takes the source code and boom, there goes all our money down the drain on day one," he says.

And the same goes for Red Hat: "I don't see how we could possibly buy Red Hat - IBM would just say, Larry congratulations, we're going our own way. They could just hire Red Hat people and they'd be in business straight away. So I don't see how anyone can buy Red Hat, not at anything near these prices, because anyone who feels like taking the code - they have no intellectual property."

Which is not to say that there are no acquisitions in open source, of course - Red Hat has just acquired JBoss, while Oracle itself acquired Sleepycat Software in February.

As Ellison explains of the Sleepycat purchase, these are effectively acquisitions of people and support teams (as well as brand, trademarks, etc) rather than code. "The price is reasonable and you're getting a high quality development team," he explained.

So how does that fit with the statement that "At some point we may embed Linux in all our products and provide support"? Does that not require the acquisition of a Linux distributor?

Frankly, no. "At some point we could very well choose to have Linux as part of the Oracle database server. We certify it, we test it. We could have JBoss as part of our middleware. It costs us nothing. We can do that, IBM can do that, HP can do that - anyone with a large support organisation is free to take that intellectual property and embed it in their own products."

This statement is simplified of course, particularly with regards to licensing and trademark usage, but essentially it is entirely possibly for Oracle - or any other company - to support and adopt an open source project without having to acquire the code or enter into a formal agreement with another vendor.

"Why didn't we buy JBoss? Because we didn't have to," Ellison explained. "If it ever got good enough we'd just take the intellectual property - just like Apache - embed it in our fusion middleware suite, and we're done."

This is the potential approach that Ellison is talking about with regards to Linux, it seems: "We would be able to test all the components together and do a better job of service," Ellison explained. "We test everything together, we have one set of management tools."

"I don't think we'll make a lot of money in the Linux operating system business, I don't think it's going to be a hugely profitable business for us. But it will also us to deliver a higher quality of service to our customers because we've tested the whole stack."

That model does not require Oracle to own Red Hat or Novell, or even offer its own branded Linux distribution. It requires the company to support a Linux code base as part of an Oracle software stack.

Ellison's interview raises plenty of questions with regards to the company's Linux strategy, and it will take a while for the implications to sink in - what of Asianux for example, the distribution established by Red Flag, Haansoft and Miracle Linux, the latter of which Oracle owns over 50% of - but the implication is that acquiring a Linux distribution is not one of the answers, despite what you might read elsewhere.

Once again, I'd encourage you to read the transcript yourself.