Comments on: Don’t Let Novell (and Microsoft) Control GNU/Linux, Licences, and Open Office

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:45:25 +0000

I've found it. "Oracle's market share on Linux was 82.6 percent in 2006, up from 80.6 percent in 2005" The newer figures are even better.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:42:40 +0000

Oracle is a serious performance database for when you need something with serious performance. Unix and Linux versions both involve ridiculous amounts of performance tweaking, custom file systems, etc. That sort of thing plus Windows is so stupid that anyone asking for it probably deserves to pay for it.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:25:15 +0000

80% or 90% run UNIX/Linux, mostly Red Hat/Unbreakable. There are up-to-date statistics on their Web site somewhere.

Oracle also releases software to GNU/Linux before it releases it to Windows.

By: David Gerard

David Gerard — Thu, 07 May 2009 18:15:28 +0000

Oh, they must be. You can buy Oracle for Windows.

*cough*

Personally, I’m sure they were sorely tempted to laugh in the face of the people who were asking for Oracle on Windows, of all the platforms. But there’s infinite sums of money in serving those who refuse to think.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:44:24 +0000

Oracle in bed with Microsoft? Tell that to Ellison.

By: souskel

souskel — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:33:23 +0000

“The last thing the community needs is a Microsoft ally in virtual charge of Open Office development (whichever variant is dominant).”

Your argument that Go-OO is a hostile fork because of Novell’s association with Microsoft seems like a bit of a false dichotomy, Roy. Sun has a patent agreement with Microsoft that covers OpenOffice.org and it’s pretty much the same as the deal that Novell has with Microsoft. To make matters even more sketchy, Sun says that patent indemnification is a major selling point of their commercial StarOffice program.

Why all the love for Sun? Wrt OOo, they are as much in bed with Microsoft as Novell is.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:50:37 +0000

IBM currently builds a version of Lotus Symphony which is based on OpenOffice.org 3.0. IBM won’t allow OpenOffice.org development to dry up.

By: Will

Will — Thu, 07 May 2009 11:46:51 +0000

If I recall correctly, the version of OpenOffice in the official Ubuntu repositories is actually Go-OO, even though it doesn’t come right out and say that. Vanilla OO.org works just fine on Ubuntu though, as I’ve been manually updating it from the OO.org site since the official Ubuntu repos stay frozen on the same release version within an Ubuntu release.

I’ve no idea how the Oracle-Sun thing will turn out for OO.org, and while it may turn out well in the end, I wonder what might have resulted if IBM had acquired Sun and subsequently fused OpenOffice 3.x with Lotus Symphony (which was forked from OO.org 1.x code) to perhaps create a new office suite better than either of them.