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Linux Pipeline Newsletter www.LinuxPipeline.com WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 2006 In This Issue: - Ellison: Oracle Wants Its Own Linux Distro - Mozilla Support Policy Spells End For Firefox 1.0.x - Wikipedia Founder Calls Protest Site Wikitruth 'A Hoax' - More News... - Podcasting In Four Easy Steps - Partners Give Red Hat-JBoss Union Mixed Reviews - Chinese Piracy Law Forbids 'Naked' PCs - More Picks... Join InformationWeek for a FREE, live TechWebCast and learn about ITIL and IT service management from ITIL experts Ken Wendle and Martyn Birchall. Our speakers are among a handful of experts globally who have attained the highest ITIL Manager certification. Tuesday,May 2,2006 - 9:00-10:00 AM PT/12:00-1:00 PM ET "http://www.techweb.com/webcasts/servicemgt050206" ----------------------------------------- Editor's Note: Larry Looms Large Larry Ellison looms large in Linuxland this week. And if the reasons for his presence haven't yet given you a serious case of the creeps, it's likely that you simply aren't paying close enough attention. Ellison certainly turned a few heads this week, when he used an interview with a Financial Times reporter to speculate that a top-tier enterprise Linux distro just might make a suitable hood ornament for Oracle's hot-rod software stack. In our own coverage of Ellison's musings, Microsoft figures as the fall guy in Oracle's latest rule-the-world scheme. If Redmond can rake in the megabucks with its roach-motel OS and sad-sack software stack (Larry Ellison's opinion, not my own), then certainly Oracle can seize the advantage by integrating its application stack with a solid, top-tier Linux distro. Yet as the Financial Times notes, there's another, more tempting short-term target lined up in Ellison's crosshairs: the insolent peasants at Red Hat who insist upon waving their sharpened pitchforks in his general direction. When Red Hat bought JBoss last week, there was plenty of talk about the crazy nature of "coopetition" in the Open Source world: The lines between friend and foe have never looked so blurred, or so the story goes. Obviously, none of those stories (including my take on the subject, in last week's Editor's Note) are relevant to Ellsion and Oracle; when Red Hat bought JBoss, the company may not have realized that it would get a nemesis thrown into the deal at no extra charge. JBoss, for its part, had wisely run screaming from Oracle's previous advances. The JBoss management knew that an Oracle "acquisition" would likely end with the company's code residing in a shallow, unmarked grave somewhere between Barstow and the Nevada state line -- and Ellison swearing he had never heard of a company by that name. Red Hat offered a very attractive cash package, of course, but it also offered JBoss the opportunity to see its technology survive, prosper, and make a real difference. Oracle, of course, has a less cheerful endgame in mind for the happy couple. Ellison thinks Red Hat's market cap is nothing short of ridiculous -- and he's more than willing to "fix" the problem. At first, Ellison and Oracle seriously considered buying the Number Two enterprise Linux vendor, Novell, and using its SuSE product line to grind Red Hat into a rounding error on someone else's balance sheet. Yet at a market cap hovering around $3 billion, Novell, too, apparently looks to Ellison like just another hunk of Open Source fool's gold. Oracle could also, of course, build its own enterprise Linux contender from scratch, for a paltry few hundred million dollars, or -- perhaps the most cost-effective option -- sift through the dozens of other alternatives currently on the market, until it finds a promising candidate to buy and remake in its own image. In any case, this isn't "coopetition," or anything else you can describe with a cutesy moniker -- this is the IT industry's second-richest, and perhaps most ruthless, executive deciding how best to rub out a source of persistent irritation. Assuming Ellison pays attention to his grudge du jour long enough to follow through on his ruminations, the enterprise Linux market a year from now will consist of Oracle -- and three grease spots where Novell, Red Hat, and JBoss were last seen. Fortunately, Ellison's own wandering attentions are likely to keep things from getting quite that ugly -- for now. Enjoy the rest of your week, and stay in touch.
Matt McKenzie
Don't let future editions of Linux Pipeline Newsletter go missing. Take a moment to add the newsletter's address to your anti-spam whitelist: linuxed@techwire.com If you're not sure how to do that, ask your administrator or ISP. Or check your anti-spam utility's documentation. Thanks. Top Linux News Ellison: Oracle Wants Its Own Linux Distro CEO Larry Ellison said that Oracle is looking into acquiring its own Linux distro, and the company has considered buying Novell for its Linux product, the Financial Times reported this week.
Mozilla Support Policy Spells End For Firefox 1.0.x
Wikipedia Founder Calls Protest Site Wikitruth 'A Hoax'
Firefox Update Tackles Pack Of "Critical" Security Flaws
MySQL Fills InnoDB Void With 'Solid' Open Source Newcomer
Tivo Wins Patent Case Against Rival EchoStar
Google Extends Enterprise Search With Hardware, Developer Links
Group Achieves Mac Triple-Boot, Adds Linux
Google Offers Free Web Calendar Service
Mozilla Rolls Out Fans' Firefox Videos Editor's Picks Podcasting In Four Easy Steps Interest in podcasting is taking off, and so is spending among advertisers and marketing professionals. Best of all, this is a media game anyone can play: Follow these four simple steps, and you'll be podcasting like a pro in no time at all.
Partners Give Red Hat-JBoss Union Mixed Reviews
Chinese Piracy Law Forbids 'Naked' PCs
Podcast Conference Takes On Advertising Cast Your Vote Now! This week's poll question: What will happen to Firefox when Internet Explorer 7 is released later this year? Will Microsoft finally squash Mozilla with a quality Web browser, or does Firefox still have plenty of tricks to keep Redmond second-guessing? Let us know, cast your vote! Next week: Our Firefox poll results -- really! -- along with a new poll question. Get More Out Of Linux Pipeline Try Linux Pipeline's RSS Feed Linux Pipeline's content is available via RSS feed: Get RSS link. The feed is also auto-discoverable to many RSS readers from the Linux Pipeline home page. Note: RSS feeds are not viewable in most Web browsers. You need an RSS reader, Web-based service, or plug-in to view RSS. Find out which RSS readers the Pipeline editors recommend.
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Join InformationWeek for a FREE, live TechWebCast and learn about ITIL and IT service management from ITIL experts Ken Wendle and Martyn Birchall. Our speakers are among a handful of experts globally who have attained the highest ITIL Manager certification. Tuesday,May 2,2006 - 9:00-10:00 AM PT/12:00-1:00 PM ET "http://www.techweb.com/webcasts/servicemgt050206" ----------------------------------------- We take your privacy very seriously. Please review our Privacy Policy.
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