A modern-day version of "The Little Red Hen"

I wrote the following comment in response to Matt Asay's recent post about Red Hat.


Matt,

"Red Hat has 30-40 of its best engineers working on the Xen project, helping to drive its innovation"

"Oracle has approximately zero developers on Xen."

I think from Oracle's point-of-view, they also have 30-40 of Red Hat's best engineers working on the Xen project, in addition to anyone else who contributes to Xen.

Oracle's actions remind me of the nursery story, "The Little Red Hen".


The Little Red Hat said, "Who will help me improve this open source operating system?"

"Not I", said the Oracle pig.

"Then I will," said the Little Red Hat. And she did.

The Little Red Hat said, "Who will help me improve these open source applications?"

"Not I", said the Oracle pig.

"Then I will," said the Little Red Hat. And she did.

The Little Red Hat says, "Who will help me sell support for these products?"

"Oh! I will," says the Oracle pig.

"No, No!" said the Little Red Hat. "I will do that." And she did.


Will Oracle be a large contributor to Linux and the various upstream applications? Only time will tell. If not, I hope Oracle's customers hold them accountable and decide to buy support from Red Hat instead.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Using the Cisco console in Linux

Image
Introduction People who work with Cisco network equipment need to be able to connect to the console port on their devices. In Windows, you can simply fire up HyperTerminal to get basic access to your devices. If you are using Linux, then you need to know how this can be done with an application called Minicom . Hardware First, you are going to need a Cisco console cable , a Cisco device, and a computer. If your computer has a serial port , then you can use the standard console cable that comes with every Cisco device. If you do not have a serial port (like most new laptops), then you need to purchase a USB to Serial adapter that supports Linux. This device will allow you to use the standard Cisco cable, which has a serial port on one end. Install Minicom You can easily install Minicom by using "System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager". Search for "minicom" and choose to install the package. Click "Apply" and Minicom should be insta
Read more

Linux NIC teaming recommendations

Image
Introduction In my job as a network engineer, I am constantly looking for ways to increase the availability of the network. This is especially true in the data center, where services are expected to always be available. One of the ways to increase the network availability of a server is by using multiple network interfaces. This technique has many different names, but I am just going to call it NIC teaming. Purpose of NIC Teaming NIC teaming increases network availability by removing single-points-of-failure (SPOF). These SPOFs are components that will cause a service outage if they become unavailable. If we consider a single network connection from your server to your switch, we can identify quite a few SPOFs: Server NIC failure Network cable failure (such as being cut or unplugged) Network switch failure (such as a planned firmware upgrade or unplanned outage) Methods of NIC Teaming The reason I am writing this blog is to help people understand the different options for NIC team
Read more

What it takes to make Ubuntu ready for use

I recently installed Ubuntu 6.10 on a new PC at work. In this post I will document all the steps I had to perform to get it ready for everyday use. Each step is assigned a level of difficulty, which I define below: Very Easy Step can be completed without using the command prompt Intuitive to complete Easy Step can be completed without using the command prompt May require searching to find the right place to make the change Medium Requires a single command to be entered at the command prompt Requires searching internet resources to find the solution Hard Requires multiple commands to be entered at the command prompt Requires searching internet resources to find the solution Very Hard Requires multiple commands to be entered at the command prompt Requires searching internet resources to find the solution Requires the user to manually edit a configuration file These criteria are quite strict, because I believe that using an operating system should be intuitive, and not require any spec
Read more