The Oracle open source credibility gap

TalkBack 1 of 16:: Next »

Thread View
Flat View

If I were in Larry Ellison's shoes...: ...I'd do the following:

1. Spin off MySQL either by selling it to the public, or by setting up a non-profit foundation and transferring all MySQL copyrights and employees to it. Ellison would get to play the good guy for once, and eliminate any conflicts of interest. MySQL's success or failure would be completely out of his hands. Holding on to it would be a no-win scenario, as he can neither kill it, nor allay suspicions that he is trying to prevent it from competing with Oracle.

2. Resurrect Star Division as a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle, completely separate from Sun. They would be in charge of both Star Office and OOO and would sell both the former, and related consulting services (helping large companies and government agencies dump another large office suite that shall remain nameless might be profitable). It probably wouldn't make a lot of money, but if it turns a modest profit, then at least it doesn't hurt the bottom line. I would also have my Star programmers put a high priority on making StarBase a fully functional front end to Oracle (makes Oracle more valuable). If it isn't already, Star Office should be the official office suite throughout the company, supported internally by the developers and support staff.

3. Keep Sun Microsystems as a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle, with its own management, including a president who would report directly to Ellison. They would sell hardware, system software, development tools, and support therefor, and would continue to be in charge of Solaris, Java and friends, and Sun Studio, but not much else on the software side of things. Sun would be primarily a hardware company, which is probably what Sun does best anyway. Sun Studio should be ported to all platforms Oracle supports and become the official development tool set throughout the company. A Windows port of Sun Studio could be made into a fully functional Windows development environment and sold profitably for half of what MS charges for Visual Studio (another traditional MS cash cow). I'd also put high priority into making Sun Studio the preferred tool for developing cross platform GUIs (write once, compile everywhere). Java already works well as a database interface tool, but high priority should be put on making Oracle as Java-friendly as possible (and conversely). Solaris' administrative interface has always been counterintuitive, and reduces the value of Sun hardware. Some modest improvements would surely improve hardware sales.; Posted by: John L. Ries Posted on: 04/27/09 (Edited: 04/28/2009 @ 09:26) You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use