Re: Oracle on Linux enhancement request, need your support!

[joelga_at_pebble.org (Joel Garry)]
| >
| >the Linux community is different. first of all, the community is more
| >densely populated with people who have intimate knowledge of their
| >systems. something breaks or stops working, chances are that the
| >problem will be solved within hours or days -- if the person who
| >detected the problem isn't able to resolve the problem herself.
| >
|
| An explosion of linux oracle clients would severely dilute this
| community, much like usenet when it opened up to the big commercial
| outfits, and the web when everyone and his brother bought Frontpage.

I do not agree fully. yes, there will be an increase of clueless people pestering others for solutions, but on the other hand there will be more people able to offer solutions. HOWTOs, examples and other forms of documentation will emerge.

| (In the US, there is even a humorous TV commercial by IBM, showing a
| webmaster demoing a couple of pages to a customer, and the customer
| goes "can this link to my payables and my vendors and" blabla, and
| the nerd goes "uh, I don't know how to do that".)

that commercial ran on TV here in Norway as well. I think it sums up the situation quite well, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that the clueless web person is a "nerd". he is more likely a used-car salesman turned web-pusher. :-)

| >Linux too is different from OSes like HP-UX or NT in the sense that it
| >was made by programmers for programmers. isolating and explaining
| >errors on a Linux system is a lot easier than under most other OSes
| >because the OS itself and the tools that usually come with it can be
| >used to probe almost every aspect of the system.
|
| Are those tools suitable for most MIS types? NIMNSHO.

I don't think that is an issue since you won't see these people using such tools wether we're talking Windows NT, HP-UX or Linux. the MIS types will typically worry about other aspects such as availability of competent people who can support the solution and the stability of the solution. you generally don't see them getting their hands dirty debugging code or tuning systems.

the only real difference here is that under Linux you can isolate problems easier, while under HP-UX you have to do a *lot* of guesswork.

| >I've been working on commercial UNIXen running Oracle and the one
| >common denominator is that I always keep wishing I could develop the
| >code under Linux so I wouldn't have to spend time trying to iron out
| >wrinkles with primitive programming tools.
|
| Naw, keep it mumbo-jumbo so we can keep our rates up over the
| MSCE's! :)

;-)

| Heck, if they dedicated a couple of engineers to do the port, they could
| get $millions worth of publicity for it!

exactly. I believe they would get more publicity porting Oracle to Linux and providing a couple of guys to answer questions on the USENET or whatever than Netscape got when releasing their browser sources to the public. (with the notable exception that Oracle, of course, would not give away the product or the source).

| >hiring two people to answer questions on the USENET costs a minute
| >fraction of what Oracle spends on marketing, but it would buy a *LOT*
| >of goodwill among developers and it would make Oracle a very
| >attractive database for Linux. Oracle probably spends more money on
| >stickers than it would cost to hire an entire platoon of technicians.
| >
| >do the math. I can't see why they wouldn't jump all over it.
|
| The math includes dividing by 0, which messes up the MBA's
| spreadsheets. :)
 

:-)  

| >| * I'd doubt Oracle would release source code to the Linux community
| >| (or any place outside of Oracle, for that matter). I'm sure Sybase,
| >| Informix, IBM, and a sleuth of other companies would love to look at
| >| the guts of Oracle.
| >
| >why would Oracle release the source code? you can buy a source
| >license for Solaris and HP-UX -- that still doesn't mean that Oracle
| >will sell you a source code license for customers running those OSes.
|
| Because the close-knit community that is linux won't accept black
| boxes.

it has and it does. look around. there's lots of commercial products out there for Linux in binary form to prove you wrong. I for one use several commercial products that are only available in binary form. sure, I would love to have the source, but I have yet to need it.

| >on the other hand; hiring capable Linux people might just lead to an
| >Oracle that is faster and leaner than the current server. quite a few
| >of the people I know that have intimate knowledge of Linux are
| >perfectionists first and peformance freaks second. they write or
| >contribute to code that is ON DISPLAY -- anyone can and will criticize
| >their code.
|
| Anarchy doesn't scale well.

I'm not sure I understand where anarchy enters into it.

-Bjørn

-- 
 Bjørn Borud <borud_at_guardian.no>       | "The Net interprets censorship 
 <URL:http://www.pvv.unit.no/~borud/>  | as damage and routes around it."
 UNIX person, one of "them"            |         - John Gilmore