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.

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