Remember when Oracle announced that it was going to make its own version of Linux and crush everyone, including Red Hat? Well, taking a cue from its big-mouth CEO, Oracle is just that – a big mouth that doesn’t deliver. Owen Thomas reports that in 30 days since it launched Oracle Linux, a whopping 9,000 copies were downloaded.
Blimey! That’s 300 copies a day! In comparison, SuSE Linux has 170,000 downloads a month, while Red Hat does about 12,500 downloads a day. In fact, Red Hat does more than 300 downloads in the time it takes Larry to get into his plane and fly off to Malibu. Some analysts like Heather Bellini of UBS believe that it might take six months for Red Hat’s business to get impacted.
She and others watching the Linux space are less worried about Oracle, and more about the ongoing integration issues with JBoss. Meanwhile, as third quarter (fiscal 2007) results show, it is a holly jolly Christmas at Red Hat!
Thats not an accurate assessment. The red-hat numbers are skewed. Besides Oracle is undergoing a lot of changes and most customers i know are waiting for better clarity on the future direction. The fusion platform, whenever it is released would be benchmarked for Ub Linux and that would perhaps lead to higher adoption. Besides we are not talking desktop apps here, these are ERP/CRM systems and the effects would be seen in long term. People don’t download and start running their ERPs on a new OS overnight. what Oracle wants to sell is Support for OS/Database and applications. Support by far is a major source of their revenue and this is one way to add more to that. There is not enough reasons for Redhat to gloat, not just yet.