Oracle goes halves for Red Hat Linux

 

Gallery

By Eric Auchard, Reuters

Posted on 26 Oct 2006 at 11:44

Speaking at the company's annual user conference on Wednesday, Chairman and Chief Executive Larry Ellison said Oracle was seeking to solve key problems that have held back the development of Linux among big corporate customers.

'Oracle is announcing full support for Red Hat Linux,' Ellison told the OracleWorld conference in San Francisco. 'The goal is to enhance and speed the adoption of Linux.'

'Our support costs less than half what Red Hat charges,' he added.

GNU/Linux is the most-popular variant of open-source software, which allows developers to share code in order to focus on creating new features themselves. Software like Linux allows customers to use programs for free, paying only for custom features, maintenance and technical support.

Red Hat shares fell nearly 11 per cent to $17.40 on Nasdaq following Ellison's announcement, while Oracle's shares rose slightly.

'What happens to Red Hat? Is killing them an unintended consequence?' one audience member asked Ellison during a question-and-answer session following his announcement.

'This is capitalism, we are competing. We are trying to offer a better product at a lower price,' said Ellison, one of IT's most outspoken executive, adding that Red Hat may choose to cut its prices too.

Ellison said Oracle was targeting corporate customers who rely on Red Hat Linux as the operating system to run their core business applications, but choose to pay Oracle to provide Linux technical support and maintenance.

Responding to a principal concern among big businesses, Oracle will fix bugs in current and prior versions of Red Hat Linux software, providing similar levels of technical support as it now offers on Oracle databases and applications.

'There is no true enterprise support' for Linux, Ellison said. 'We would like to fix that.'

Another concern among corporate customers is the threat of patent suits by software makers against customers, but Ellison said Oracle would assume legal responsibility to assure them.

'This uncertainty about intellectual property is also slowing (Linux) adoption among our larger customers,' he said.