01.29.07
Oracle to ‘Pull a Red Hat’ to Fight MySQL?
A bit off-topic perhaps, but recall the fact that Microsoft eliminated a threat or two (e.g. Hula) as soon as its Trojan horse entered Novell’s communal city. Oracle pulled similar tricks — albeit without success — in order to put Red Hat under pressure. This crusade appears to carry on. MySQL reveals some hints which suggest that Oracle could use a similar strategy to undercut MySQL AB.
Will Oracle launch Unbreakable MySQL?
“They have hinted to us that they will,” said Mickos, indicating that the database giant is planning to repeat its October 2006 Unbreakable Linux plan, which saw it undercut Red Hat with enterprise Linux support.
Proprietary software companies that feel the squeeze may have found a way of irritating and shaking Linux and Open Source software vendors. They try to sell and support Free software themselves. Who’s letting them in the door? Certainty not Red Hat.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
Ian said,
January 29, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Hula was never a threat to Microsoft. It never even played in the same realm as Exchange. Hula was the open source version of NetMail, which itself was a subset of GroupWise built to deliver GroupWise webaccess client access in a self contained stack apart from the much larger parent product where the full stack wasn’t required. It wasn’t even a threat to GroupWise. Hula was/is a self contained web based mail product. GroupWise and Exchange are full blown group-ware stacks which have native clients, webmail clients, access abilities from other clients, shared calendering, and both even have document authoring I believe. The only threat to the dominance of Exchange is GroupWise, not Hula.
Hula was floundering anyway, without much community support, well before the Microsoft deal. You’re making an incorrect assumption. The community, or rather the lack there of, killed Hula not Microsoft.