Open Source: Good for the OS, but Not
for the Database
Larry Ellison embraces Linux, but don't expect open source databases
from Oracle any time soon. (Part Two of six).
http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=6186_0_4_0_C
Larry Ellison [Oracle]
| POSTED: 12.26.04 @15:50
Larry Ellison waxed eloquent
at the Wall Street Journal's D Conference this
summer, telling interviewers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher
why he thinks Linux is the way to go. He was less
enthusiastic about open source when it came to Oracle's
products, however, as an audience member found out when he
asked the Oracle CEO about that very topic.
Question: Let me ask you about Linux and open source.
You've said you're going to support it. Obviously your
products also
run on Windows—
Ellison: We're utterly promiscuous. We run on Linux
as well.
Question: You're encouraging open source and you're
encouraging Linux, but you have—what is your attitude
towards MySQL, which is an
open source competitor to you?
Ellison: MySQL...Google uses it, Yahoo uses it, and
some others use it. It has pretty good query capabilities,
but it's not very strong transactionally. I would say that
they're not as strong from a securities standpoint or a
liability standpoint or a scalability standpoint. There are
a bunch of things we do much better than MySQL. |
The interesting thing is that for an open source product like MySQL to get a lot of traction, they're going to have to walk down
the same road that Linux did, which is to get a lot of very large
companies to support them. There is this myth that Linux was created
and popularized by a bunch of guys who worked by day at hobby shops.
Then supposedly they'd go home and program in Linux in their free
time. But in fact, the biggest supporters of Linux are businesses
like IBM. IBM is not a hobby shop. Oracle, we're not a hobby shop.
Hewlett Packard. There are huge companies supporting Linux and the
open source movement.
MySQL doesn't have that same kind of support behind it. SAP is the
first large company to begin to
support MySQL, but again, if you compare that landscape to the
number of companies that are willing to launch Linux...there are
just a bunch more companies supporting Linux. So I don't think you
can just paint with a broad brush and say it's "open source versus
not open source." It's "open source that has support by the
technology industry."
Question: But to the extent that Linux does get adopted more
broadly—because of the backing of these non-hobby, large
corporations—doesn't it help a company with an application like
MySQL to ride that wave?
Ellison: I don't think so. I think in MySQL—actually, the
most interesting open source product that nobody ever talks about is
Apache. Long before Linux, there was Apache. At the time,
everybody bought Microsoft's IAS; it was the dominant web server
around—85% share, something like that. And Apache just utterly
crushed them. And people said, "Gee, Apache crushed Microsoft
because it was cheaper." But it didn't crush Microsoft because it
was cheap. It crushed them because Apache was much better.
What makes Linux very attractive to us is its use in data center
operations. Now, if you've got one computer in your house or one
computer in your branch office, Linux is not better than Windows.
But if you have a hundred or a thousand computers in your data
center, Linux (which is an open source version of Unix) is a
much better operating system for a data center than is Windows.
It's much more manageable; it's much more secure; it's even a little
bit faster.
One of the things that has made Windows attractive is that it runs
on low-cost, high-performance
Intel hardware. But now, Linux takes
that differentiation away from Microsoft, because it
also runs on lower-cost, high-performance Intel hardware.
Audience Question: Sun is
opening up Solaris. Have you thought about opening up any of
Oracle's products? Also, do you think there might be an open source
threat to the database business at some point?
Ellison: I'm not sure our customers would feel comfortable if
the software they were using were modified by someone whose name was
listed as an addendum to their software. What happens if you're
using an open source version of the Oracle database and it breaks?
Right now we have a compact with our customers—the database has to
always work. You can reboot your operating system, but your database
can never throw away your data. There is no piece of software with
more demands on it—in terms of reliability—than the database. People
get extremely upset with you when you discard their information.
This doesn't mean that there won't be [open source] databases. MySQL
is heavily used by a lot of people. But again, it's used mainly for
queries rather than updates. It's not used in transaction theory.
It's mainly used for searching.
Do I think there's a threat? Not unless a number of large companies
get behind it.
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