Is Linux On Larry's List?

As everyone knows by now, Oracle's CEO told The Financial Times that he looked atand rejectedthe idea of buying Red Hat. Oh yes, ditto with Novell/ SUSE Linux.

The exact quote: "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 says.

He also acknowledged: "You could argue that it makes a lot of sense for us to look at distributing and supporting Linux."

Ellison and Oracle have long been proponents of most of the LAMP stack with the possible exception of MySQL.

id
unit-1659132512259
type
Sponsored post

The next sentence says Ellison also mentioned that he thought about buying Novell (and SUSE Linux) but that deal would face the same risk.

Sooooo. If you don't want to drop big bucks to BUY a Linux distribution, the altternative is to build your own. Hmmmm.

Red Hat's stock promptly fell 7 percent with folks attributing that drop to Larry's comments and to Goldman Sachs cutting its rating on the company, citing its decision to buy JBoss.

Ah yes. JBoss. Red Hat's acquisition of JBoss puts Red Hat into competition with former partner Oracle. Hmmm. Both Oracle and IBM had been Red Hat's cool big friends. Predictably, IBM wouldn't comment on Red Hat's acquisition of the web server company. Equally predictably, Ellison dropped a bombshell in an international newspaper that casts big-time doubts on the Red Hat-JBoss combo's viability.

Still, never say never. Some said Oracle would never really buy PeopleSoft. Or Siebel. Tens of billions of dollars and a few years later, both companies are in Oracle's pocket.

Writing a check for an entire operating system is one way to fill out a software stack. But Ellison's right: It would also make the company competitive with Microsoft not only in databases and tools, (and ERP apps) but in OPERATING SYSTEMS. Most companies that have taken on Microsoft and lived to tell the tale (and maybe even prosper) are those who pick their battles very carefully.

Taking on Windows is a whole other matter.