On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:55 PM, Always Learning <centos at g7.u22.net> wrote: > > On Tue, 2011-01-25 at 14:25 -0800, Benjamin Smith wrote: > >> On Tuesday, January 25, 2011 11:20:34 am Always Learning wrote: >> > Then one day a big bad wolf called Oracle of very expensive Oracle SQL >> > fame swallowed Red Hat, like they swallowed MySQL, Solaris, Open Office >> > and Visual Box. The long term future for these is uncertain. >> >> Whaaa...? Facts would seem otherwise.... Here's an article from just a few >> months ago! >> >> http://www.glgroup.com/News/Oracle-to-Red-Hat--Its-Not-Your-Fathers-Linux- >> Market-Anymore-51058.html > > Thank you. Happily I got the 'swallowed Red Hat' wrong. Sadly the long > term future for Red Hat, MySQL, Open Office and Visual Box is certainly > uncertain. > > I've seen the changes in the computer world first-hand for 43 years > staring when there were no screens, no keyboards and no disks although > one installation, a KDF9, did have a magnetic drum. Everything changes. > Computer companies and software change, evolve and then eventually > disappear. It's 'computer evolution'. [...] > Paul. > England, > EU. Why does Redhat keep getting thrown into the mix with MySQL, OO.org etc...? It's already been said here that Oracle did not buy and doesn't own anything related to Redhat. Oracle may have relaunched a competitor to Redhat Linux (they had to relaunch because, frankly, no one was using OHEL), but that's not the same at all as the situation with MySQL, OpenOffice, etc... They just don't belong in the same sentence. Oracle now owns Sun, which is the company that sponsored and ran those other projects. Oracle is now actively dismantling many of them. They've already killed a bunch, and the ones that seemed like they might be around for a while now also look somewhat shaky. Nothing is certain in any market, but Redhat is the 900lb gorilla in the Linux market, while Oracle has yet to make any significant inroads as an OS vendor.