Feature Article By Jeff Gould
Copyright © 2007, Peerstone Research Inc, All rights reserved.

February 7, 2007

Do you remember the story about the dog that didn't bark? It was a Sherlock Holmes tale where the world's finest detective deduced the killer's identity by observing that a certain dog, who should have been barking ferociously, was in fact completely silent.

The dog who didn't bark reminds me of Oracle. It's been over three months since the database giant announced its clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but we've heard surprisingly little about the new offering. The initial press release back in October mentioned four companies that were endorsing Oracle's Linux, including that well-known IT titan the International House of Pancakes. Since that time Oracle's PR department has cranked out over 100 press releases pertaining to every conceivable Oracle product, but not one has mentioned any new customers for "Unbreakable Linux".

During the same time period, erstwhile Linux arch-enemy Microsoft has somehow managed to unload no fewer than 35,000 subscriptions to Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server (aka SLES). The buyers include three Fortune 50 class financial institutions in Europe who were already Suse customers and one mega retail chain, Wal-Mart, that apparently had been a Red Hat only shop at least on the Linux side of the house (the retailer was of course already a Microsoft user). The Wal-Mart deal has attracted more attention in the press, perhaps because Wal-Mart is almost as polarizing a name as Microsoft in some circles.

Now don't get me wrong. As a resident in good standing of San Francisco I certainly wouldn't want to commit the political faux pas of seeming to imply that Wal-Mart or the Microsoft-Novell deal were anything less than evil. That would be right up there with denying the imminent reality of Global Warming (it's getting hotter in the room already, I can feel it, quick, someone call Al Gore).

But still, I can't help noticing the contrast in the fallout from two of last year's biggest Linux announcements (we won't count Andrew Morton's decision to take a job at Google). I have a simple explanation for the difference. Oracle isn't really serious about its Red Hat cloning business, but Microsoft is entirely serious about its desire to accede to the wishes of those of its customers who want to use Linux. This wasn't Steve Ballmer's first choice, and you can bet that he will still try to replace Linux with Windows whenever he can. But for those cases where he can't, he has recognized the truth of the old adage that if you can't beat 'em then the next best thing is to join 'em.

Oracle, on the other hand, is merely having us on. I'm willing to go out on a limb and forecast that Oracle Linux will wind up on the same scrap heap of computing history as some of Larry Ellison's previous bright ideas, like the massively parallel nCube machine (in which he invested tens of millions of dollars before seeing the company implode in 2001) or the Network Computer (remember, the $600 box without a microprocessor that was going to replace the PC). Either that, or Oracle will have to start lining up some serious Linux buyers of the ilk of Wal-Mart and Deutsche Bank.

The reality is that companies are more interested in buying Linux from Microsoft than Oracle. The question is why. The simple answer is that it has something to do with the value proposition. Oracle's main sales argument is lower price. But there are some gotchas in the fine print that erase the difference for many customers. For example, Oracle won't let you mix premium and standard levels of support. If you want Oracle's premier support on one server you've got to buy it for every server. Red Hat by contrast lets you mix and match support levels within your installed base, so you can put the expensive contracts on only a few really important servers and cover your non-mission critical machines at a lower, cheaper level (or just run free-as-in-beer Fedora).

Oracle is also offering indemnification against intellectual property risk, and that is a positive. However, the FAQ on Oracle's web site explaining the indemnification offer ends with the stern reminder that "No contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document". So customers will have to read the fine print on their actual contracts to find out exactly what protection they are getting.

Microsoft and Novell, unlike Oracle, aren't leading with price. Their first sales argument is improved interoperability between Windows and Linux. It's not exactly crystal clear what they mean by this, but one early hint is that they think they can make cross-over virtualization between the two systems easier. We can get some insight into this from several job ads that Microsoft has obligingly posted on the public blog of its Open Source Software Lab. One reads as follows:

"... we are looking for an experienced Software Development Engineer in Test who can take on the challenging role of qualifying Microsoft’s new Longhorn Server Hypervisor based virtual machine solution in a collaborative project with Novell..."
Gosh, I wonder which project that could be. Sounds like Microsoft wants to make sure Linux runs as well as they can make it run on Viridian, their future Xen-like hypervisor scheduled for release sometime next year. The same site has a mirror-image ad for a software engineer position at Novell that will require the successful candidate to "take on the challenging role of qualifying a SLES10 based virtual machine solution in a collaborative project with Microsoft". Hmm, sounds like Novell and Microsoft want to make sure Longhorn Server runs as well as it can on Xen, the open source hypervisor incorporated in SLES10.

The other part of the Microsoft-Novell value proposition of course is protection from intellectual property (IP) concerns. To this most people in the Linux community would say, oh, you mean "protection" as in "protection racket". I'm not going to rehash all the arguments here about Microsoft's promise not to sue Novell customers for using Linux. The assertion of intellectual property rights seems to have become an issue that it is no longer possible to have a purely rational discussion about in the software industry.

Virtually every software producer in the world – from IBM and Microsoft all the way down to the lowliest hacker in a garage somewhere – believes that they have the right to control how their code is used, whether the mechanism of that control be patents, copyrights or licenses. Unless you donate your code to the public domain, you are imposing some restrictions on what people can do with it. And virtually every serious software producer expects the rights they assert over their creations to be legally enforceable. Even Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation routinely sues people for violations of the GPL.

So by that logic there is no reason why Microsoft shouldn't be entitled to sue to protect its property just like anyone else. After all, you can't reasonably argue that Microsoft should be the only player in the industry that isn't allowed to sue people who misuse its IP. The Linux community has become somewhat post-rational on this point. The question is not "Is it fair for Microsoft to threaten legal action?" Of course it's fair! Hardball, but allowed under the rules that we all play by. Rather, the real questions are:

(1) Does Microsoft actually have any IP that is violated by the Linux kernel?
(2) If so, will they actually ever resort to suing their customers to enforce that IP?

Only the management team at Microsoft knows the answer to these questions. But for what it's worth, my guess is that if they really had a patent smoking gun against Linux they would have used it by now (though prudent Red Hat investors might want to wait a little while after the release of RHEL5 before doubling down on the stock). And if it turns out that Redmond really does have something they've been sitting on all this time, I'm willing to bet that they're not going to start suing current or potential buyers of Microsoft software any time soon. Which pretty much rules out 99% of the world's business organizations and government agencies.

It's interesting to note that, unpopular as the idea may be in the Linux community, some customers actually do seem to find value in the IP protection scheme offered by the Microsoft-Novell deal. As I said, I'm inclined to think it's all smoke and mirrors myself. But the CIO of Wal-Mart evidently thinks otherwise, and her views carry a little more weight in the industry than mine! It seems that Wal-Mart is planning to extend its web presence internationally – check out www.walmart.co.uk or www.walmart.fr and you'll see why. Apparently they want to do this on Linux, and good for them (though interestingly enough Netcraft's "What's that site running" feature shows that www.walmart.com is on Microsoft's Internet Information Server 6.0)

Yeah, I know, some people (like Mary Jo Foley) are saying that Microsoft got the Linux deal at Wal-Mart because Microsoft's COO Kevin Turner used to wear the CIO hat at Wal-Mart. Personally I'd say this is a wildly inaccurate view of how publicly held $315 billion dollar retail chains do business. Remember, Wal-Mart is the company that just this last December dumped its brand new Chief Marketing Officer over the mere appearance of impropriety in the way she selected the chain's new advertising agency.

No, the truth is that Microsoft and Novell got the Wal-Mart business – and are selling a lot more Linux than Oracle – because they are giving customers what they actually want.