Yes, but this is the nub. No big DB company is going to port to a
platform that it does not believe will bring it any revenue.
It may not be like this forever. There are buisnesses who use high
end DB's where performance, performance, performance is strictly the
one and only concern. Nothing else matters.
What do you think would happen if, for example, I walked into Charles
Schwab's Wall Street office tomorrow and told them "I can get a
transaction from one machine to another done XXXX percent more quickly
than you do now, that is, if use a Linux based solution." This means
Schwab would be able to cut deals before any other broker could
because they have the fastest technology.
And as Larry McVoy, myself and numerous others have shown the world.
Linux _does_ have the performance edge, so we could plant ourselves in
critical positions like this.
By what qualification is Linux BETTER. It is cheaper certainly. It
is pretty stable on the surface and is a good toy.
Linux has been shown to irrevocably have the best performance in
numerous critical ways. As everyone knows, we have the _fastest_ over
the wire TCP numbers in the world.
> I don't want a Solaris to run Oracle. I want Oracle on Linux.
You can get halfway there on a Sparc these days. We have the SunOS
Oracle working under emulation with SparcLinux. The SparcLinux team
and myself are going to work towards making sure we can get some
legitimate Oracle benchmarks run with such an installation to show the
world that we beat the pants off of SunOS/Solaris running SunOS Oracle
on a SparcLinux box.
If people are a little daunted as to how much I say that performance
can have an effect on Linux being able to get into big commercial
markets, think about this. Some companies make their entire
livelyhood around having the fastest solutions on the planet. Check
out SGI for example.
2. There is real concerns over free software and support. Many
companies are attracted to the idea of free software but if it affects
their core business due to lack of support they will not choose it -
they cannot afford.
Expect this to change. If you _really_ want Linux support at a big
shop, there is certainly someone out there even today who are willing
to get paid to do it and be that "person on the phone".
4. Linux zealots do not add to the cause. Linux zealots get the backs
of companies up who may have considered Linux but have decided not to
procede for any number of reasons.
I think one of the FreeBSD people referred to us as "Cowboys", to that
I respond "Yee Fuckin' Haw"!
dm@engr.sgi.com
'Ooohh.. "FreeBSD is faster over loopback, when compared to
Linux over the wire". Film at 11.' -Linus