Oracle to distribute Linux

Oracle plans to distribute and support Linux, probably licensing an existing distribution to bundle with their database. However they will still support all 4 major distributions ( including I assume Redhat (US), Pacific HiTech (Japan) and SUSE (Europe)) wanting to be the people who are called if a user has a problem with Linux. Read more below.

Over 20,000 Linux developers have signed up to Oracle's development programme while the total number of developers has doubled from 55,000 to 110,000 over the past few months. This may have helped cause this momemtous announcement.

Yesterday at Internet World, Larry Ellison criticised Microsoft's servers everywhere' distributed computing model showing it for it is: a strategy to avoid admitting NT's scalability problems while maintaining high revenues with per seat licensing. Ellison's solution still follows the network based vision he had for network computers (now sort of dead). However instead of relying on Java, he may now be relying on Linux and Oracle's Database technology: Oracle will be investing over $100 million in a developer program to encourage developers to build "Internet Computing" applications, based around Oracle's database -- with as carrot free software licenses, training and tools.

With IBM's interest in e-commerce making it push Java, Oracle's interest in network services such as iFS (Internet File System), and Intel's recent murmurings about application specific devices all make for an interesting battle shaping up between the computing industry and Microsoft.