| Oracle to become a Linux power? |
Apr. 17, 2006
 In an interview with the Financial Times (subscriber-only link), Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said that Oracle may be considering buying a Linux company in the future. After considering open-source and Linux's pluses and minuses, Ellison has concluded that for Oracle, "We don't have to fight open source, we have to exploit open source," Ellison reportedly said.
That doesn't mean, however, that Ellison will be pursuing Novell or Red Hat with the ardor that he chased down and then bought PeopleSoft and Siebel.
While Oracle uses Linux in its own offices and as a foundation operating system for its major Oracle application platform, Ellison remains unconvinced that owning major open source programs makes sense. He's concerned that because a company can't fundamentally own an open-source program's intellectual property, it may not make sense for a company like Oracle.
Ellison told Financial Times reporter Richard Waters that "I don't see how we could possibly buy Red Hat... I'm not going to spend $5bn, or $6bn, for something that can just be so completely wiped off the map." He also indicated that he had considered making an offer on Novell.
That hasn't, however, stopped Oracle from buying smaller open-source players like database vendor Sleepycat. Oracle also recently tried, but ultimately did not purchase JBoss. Instead, JBoss was purchased by Red Hat.
Still, there's certainly no reason why Oracle couldn't buy a smaller Linux vendor, or create its own distribution.
Red Hat had no comment about Ellison's thoughts.
Bruce Lowry, Novell's global public relations director, said, "We're not commenting on this. There have been rumors about Novell being acquired by any number of folks -- IBM, Oracle, Sun. We haven't commented on any of them. We just continue to focus on our core businesses of Linux and open source, and security and identity."
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Additional Perspective
For further perspective, read these two Linux-Watch.com columns by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols:
Other Related Stories
(Click here for further information)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
