Stranger things have happened.
We have regularly recommended that IBM support Debian. The Red Hat JBoss deal is another reason to consider it. Now it seems Larry Ellison, being Larry, says its time to take out Red Hat.
Lisa Vaas is calling out a potential Oracle Ubuntu tieup. How could we not appreciate the sly humour opportunities for Oracle’s distro being canonical? It strikes me that neither Oracle nor IBM would be able to swing establishing a new distro on their own. According to the FT, Larry agrees:
I don’t see how we could possibly buy Red Hat – IBM would just say, ‘Larry, congratulations, we’re going our own way.
But what about an IBM and Oracle play? Throw in SAP and it would probably get some traction.
To cheekily reappropriate the words of Alex at Entiva Group: "creating a stable foundation for the open source software industry and bode well for both the short term and the long term."
Major ISVs would surely appreciate a Linux that is just a thin slice, rather than a huge plateful of Chicago pizza with 20 extra toppings, some of which you hate. I don’t eat pepperoni. Is that a GNOME or a side order of garlic bread?
Red Hat is important though because its an ISV base platform, that enterprises feel they can rely on, not just because "its Linux", which is why I think Oracle may still be be considering the company for an acquisition, anti rhetoric notwithstanding.
Oracle likes to think operating systems are expendable, its in the corporate DNA. Anyone remember Raw Iron? Oracle doesn’t like the the account control that operating systems enable.
An enterprise ISV third distro would be a possibility, if the big three worked together. Anyone for LinOIS? Or maybe call it IBOGAIN, in which big middeware vendors purge themselves of third party Linux addictions.
Tags: IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, JBoss, Raw Iron, Debian, Ubuntu, Canonical
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