When Larry Ellison asked him to design a Linux-based Internet appliance,
Wim Coekaerts reported back with a plan a couple of weeks later--and won
himself a new task.
Coekaerts' quick turnaround was enough to convince Oracle's duly impressed
CEO to charge the soft-spoken Belgian native with helping to figure out a
Linux strategy for the software company.
If that job seemed a big one a couple of years ago, it has since grown in
importance with more large corporations starting to adopt Linux in their
data centers.
Oracle has never before controlled its own operating system source code,
and the collaborative development process allows the company to prototype
applications on the operating system without waiting for an outside vendor
to respond to specific feature requests.
But Linux also poses a challenge. While Oracle has a clear self-interest
promoting its work with Linux, much as has IBM over the last couple of
years, it needs to perform a diplomatic balancing act and stay in the good
graces of the open-source community, as well as that of Linus Torvalds.
CNET News.com recently sat down to learn about Oracle's strategy from the
man known inside the company as "Mr. Linux."
Q: Is your group set up separately so as to avoid any interaction with the
app groups at Oracle?
A: There's lots of interaction but we don't want the group to be part of
one product division. Oracle products need to work with Linux, and so we
give guidance to everyone. But we don't want to be in the middle of
developers working on Oracle products. All of these projects are close
sourced, while everything we do on the Linux side is open. We don't want to
have closed source binary drivers and stuff like that
Isn't that a contradiction?
It's a nice arrangement. We want SuSE, and Red Hat and United Linux to use
all that stuff so that their next versions run better on Oracle.
FROM...
http://news.com.com/2008-1001-992907.html
AND...
Security hole found in Linux
Programmers identify a vulnerability in the heart of Linux that could let
people take control of their own systems--even if they don't have
privileges to do so.
http://news.com.com/2100-1016-993278.html?tag=fd_top
