As I mentioned in my last blog I have been at Oracle Open World the last few days.  The highlight of OOW is usually Larry Ellison’s keynote and this year did not disappoint, although this was not a typical Larry Ellison keynote.  Usually he demonstrates something, for example, RAC, Oracle Spatial, some aspect of grid computing, mobile, etc.  But this year he really did something different and it is going to change things in the computing world.

To set the stage, before Larry’s keynote the executive staff of NASDAQ was on hand at Moscone in San Francisco.  They brought along the big button that rings the closing bell to close trading at NASDAQ. NASDAQ were on hand to celebrate with Larry, Safra Catz, and Charles Phillips the 20th anniversary of Oracle’s listing on NASDAQ.  The entire audience counted down to 2 pm PDT (5m EDT), and watched Larry, Safra, and Charles push the closing bell.  The important thing for what follows is that the market was officially closed before Larry began his keynote.

After a few photo sessions, Larry began his keynote.  He started off fairly innocuously, talking about grid computing and the history of Oracle’s commitment to grid computing from the early clustering days based on VAXes to the modern Intel and AMD-based x86 servers running Oracle RAC.

This lead to Oracle’s early commitment to Linux, Oracle’s development of a clustering file system that was accepted into the Linux kernel, and other Oracle development effort to make Linux secure, highly available, and reliable.  But Oracle feels that even though Linux adoption on the server has been rapid, it still has not achieved the penetration it should have.   In Oracle’s opinion there are three reasons for this.

1) Hot fixes – Fixes are delivered in the next version of Linux, not the one you are currently using.

2) Cost – The cost of support is too high.

3) No indemnification – If another SCO comes along, there is a risk that Linux customers may be sued over copyright infringement.

Still nothing really surprising in this.  But the next thing Larry said was a bombshell. 

Unbreakable Linux 2.0

Oracle is going to offer support for Red Hat Linux, which is by far the market leader in Linux. Oracle

will offer a basic support package which Oracle says is equivalent to Red Hat’s current support package, at approximately half the price of Red Hat’s(Oracle’s figures).  And in addition Oracle will indemnify its Linux support customers.   You can download Red Hat Linux with Oracle’s bug fixes for free from Oracle’s web site.  And as was demonstrated in the keynote, you can switch from Red Hat Linux support to Oracle Linux support in about 40 seconds.  Oracle says it is going to keep its distros in sync with Red Hat’s, which will be an interesting process to watch.

Michael Dell in a video said Dell will support Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux initiative.

Penquins

And then somehow Larry brought some real penguins onto the stage.  They were a bit shy so I was unable to get any pictures.

Oracle Enterprise Linux

You can download Oracle’s Enterprise Linux at Oracle Enterprise Linux.  The license is GPL2.

What Are the Implications ?

First of all this means some good, but more bad for Red Hat.  It will further solidify Red Hat Linux as the market leader, but I expect that a significant proportion of Red Hat’s Linux support business will move to Oracle.  When I looked this morning, Red Hat’s share price was down compare to last night’s close by over 25%.  Secondly, it is good for Linux customers, there will be better and cheaper support, and companies who have hesitated to adopt Linux because of indemnification fears, won’t have to worry about that any longer.  Software vendors like Autodesk who have released server products on Linux (for example, MapGuide Enterprise) are going  to feel vindicated in their decision to support Linux because they will see an increasing proportion of Linux sales, because this can’t help but spur Linux adoption.

Very exciting times.