freebsd-advocacy Digest, Vol 295, Issue 1

[Kevin Hatfield]

The simplest most effective way to grow the FreeBSD userbase is
indemnification. Large companies that purchase RHEL/SuSE, etc. It's
not because they "don't know what they're doing" as someone mentioned
above. Most of the large Enterprise RHEL/SUSE contracts come down to
indemnification with support being a bonus.

Bottom line is that large companies purchase commercial support for
three reasons, listed higher priority to lower:
1) Indemnification
2) Support
3) Someone responsible at the end of the day which will provide some
sort of SLA.

Companies don't want to be sued, they want to be able to get support
when needed, and they need someone for the stakeholders to blame if a
critical vulnerability is rampant within the business. Open source as
a whole has one big issue which is they normally do not have the funds
for a legal battle. They also have no *real* responsibility to fix
issues.

Don't take those things to offense because I'm a huge fan of FreeBSD.
Run it on all of my personal business servers. Although, my job at the
Enterprise has the requirements stated above.

Of course, everyone knows SUSE/RHEL neither really deserve the
"status" they have achieved in the Enterprise environment. It all
comes down to survival and covering your tail.

Just my 2 cents...

On 9/28/09, freebsd-advocacy-request at freebsd.org
<freebsd-advocacy-request at freebsd.org> wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: why no Oracle on FreeBSD ? (Chris Rees)
>    2. Re: why no Oracle on FreeBSD ? (Charlie Kester)
>    3. Re: why no Oracle on FreeBSD ? (Allen)
>    4. Re: why no Oracle on FreeBSD ? (Michael Vince)
>    5. Re: Why no SAP nor DB2 on FreeBSD ? (Ivan Voras)
>    6. Re: Why no SAP nor DB2 on FreeBSD ? (Tony Theodore)
>    7. Re: Why no SAP nor DB2 on FreeBSD ? (Saifi Khan)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 20:25:50 +0100
> From: Chris Rees <utisoft at googlemail.com>
> Subject: Re: why no Oracle on FreeBSD ?
> To: Saifi Khan <saifi.khan at datasynergy.org>
> Cc: freebsd-advocacy at freebsd.org, "Julian H. Stacey"
> 	<jhs at berklix.com>,	freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Message-ID:
> 	<b79ecaef0909271225r438c4205u1389cfeafe90a051 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> 2009/9/25 Saifi Khan <saifi.khan at datasynergy.org>:
>> On Thu, 24 Sep 2009, Julian H. Stacey wrote:
>>
>>> > > > i noticed that there is no Oracle available for FreeBSD
>>> > > > http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/index.html
>>> > > >
>>> > > > What could be the reason for that ?
>>> > >
>>> > > Best ask direct of commercial application vendor Oracle.
>>> > > IE wave money under Oracle's nose & ask to purchase what you want.
>>> > >
>>> > > If Oracle think there's enough profit in it, there's many BSD
>>> > > consultants eg http://berklix.com/consultants/ willing to work.
>>> > >
>>> > > Cheers,
>>> > > Julian
>>> > > --
>>> >
>>> > i was wondering if there is any technical reason behind this ?
>>>
>>> Most unlikely. Ask Oracle & tell advocacy@ what you find out.
>>> I'd bet perceived market share & demand as ever, ie Money.
>>>
>>
>> Hi Julian:
>>
>> Here is the response on the Oracle forum thread to my posting,
>>
>>
>> """
>> FreeBSD is a kernel not used in any extant operating system with
>> the sole exception being Apple's Mac OSX so you are heading,
>> full speed ahead, toward disappointment.
>
> And this is where he gives away that he knows nothing about it. In the
> first sentence, he shows that he thinks that Mac OS X uses the FreeBSD
> kernel. (Which is wrong, in case you were wondering
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) )
>
>> FreeBSD handles many
>> things very differently from the UNIX System 5 standard so you
>> can not just kludge your way into this.
>
> What?
>
>>
>> What fascinates me about your request is why you care. FreeBSD
>> is going nowhere at a staggeringly fast pace. And to the same
>> place as went Oracle Database version 8.0. Obscurity.
>
> What?
>
>>
>> Install Oracle's Enterprise Linux and you will have a real
>> operating system in less time than you've spent monitoring this
>> thead. And as an additional value it will support the Oracle
>> technology stack while you are still young enough to use it.
>> """
>>
>> and
>> """
>> IF you can match up the system calls, then you can 'make it
>> work'.
>> """
>>
>> The relevant  links are
>> 1.  http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=952076&tstart=0
>> 2.  http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=952076&tstart=0
>>
>> The response seems to suggest that there is some feature used by
>> Oracle which is expected from a UNIX Sys 5 std and perhaps
>> FreeBSD does not support/have the syscall.
>>
>> Given the response, What is your analysis of the situation ?
>>
>>
>> thanks
>> Saifi.
>>
>
>
> This guy replying to your post was a troll, basically. Ignore him, and
> concentrate on real Oracle employees for sources. Of course, if this
> was an Oracle employee, then you really should think about using some
> different software....
>
> Chris
>
> --
> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Top-posting.
> Q: What is the most annoying thing in a mailing list?
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:09:35 -0700
> From: Charlie Kester <corky1951 at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: why no Oracle on FreeBSD ?
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org, freebsd-advocacy at freebsd.org
> Message-ID: <20090927210934.GA85077 at comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> On Sun 27 Sep 2009 at 12:25:50 PDT Chris Rees wrote:
>>This guy replying to your post was a troll, basically. Ignore him, and
>
> Yep.  It shows that some Linux fans are just as prone to creating FUD as
> their adversaries in the Windows world.
>
> I'd like to think the BSD community is better than that.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:11:15 -0400
> From: Allen <GedankeZauberer at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: why no Oracle on FreeBSD ?
> To: freebsd-advocacy at freebsd.org
> Message-ID: <4ABFE303.8050104 at comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Charlie Kester wrote:
>> On Sun 27 Sep 2009 at 12:25:50 PDT Chris Rees wrote:
>>> This guy replying to your post was a troll, basically. Ignore him, and
>>
>> Yep.  It shows that some Linux fans are just as prone to creating FUD as
>> their adversaries in the Windows world.
>>
>> I'd like to think the BSD community is better than that.
>
> I use Linux, I don't do this kind of thing because I use both. I have a
> machine with FreeBSD on it dual booting Windows 98 SE (So I can play
> Magic: The Gathering; Spells of the Ancients, and some other stuff) and
> then I have a Debian box, and another Debian machine dual booting with
> Windows XP, and my Laptop dual boots Slackware 13.0 and Windows XP, and
> then on my Wife's Laptop is Windows XP, and OpenSUSE. My FTP server PC
> runs Slackware 12.2. I use both Linux and BSD because I like both, and
> anyone who says Linux is better is sadly mistaken, they both are great :)
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:37:24 +1000
> From: Michael Vince <mv at thebeastie.org>
> Subject: Re: why no Oracle on FreeBSD ?
> To: Saifi Khan <saifi.khan at datasynergy.org>
> Cc: freebsd-advocacy at freebsd.org, "Julian H. Stacey"
> 	<jhs at berklix.com>,	freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Message-ID: <4AC02164.7040201 at thebeastie.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 25/09/2009 10:28 PM, Saifi Khan wrote:
>> On Thu, 24 Sep 2009, Julian H. Stacey wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>>> i noticed that there is no Oracle available for FreeBSD
>>>>>> http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/index.html
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What could be the reason for that ?
>>>>>>
>>>>> Best ask direct of commercial application vendor Oracle.
>>>>> IE wave money under Oracle's nose&  ask to purchase what you want.
>>>>>
>>>>> If Oracle think there's enough profit in it, there's many BSD
>>>>> consultants eg http://berklix.com/consultants/ willing to work.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Julian
>>>>> --
>>>>>
>>>> i was wondering if there is any technical reason behind this ?
>>>>
>>> Most unlikely. Ask Oracle&  tell advocacy@ what you find out.
>>> I'd bet perceived market share&  demand as ever, ie Money.
>>>
>>>
>> Hi Julian:
>>
>> Here is the response on the Oracle forum thread to my posting,
>>
>>
>> """
>> FreeBSD is a kernel not used in any extant operating system with
>> the sole exception being Apple's Mac OSX so you are heading,
>>
> The reality is that Oracle is meant to be a very expensive solution for
> companies that don't know what to do. This makes Red Hat etc an ideal
> contender for this situation as it promises full enterprise support.
> Whether it is the truth or if its even a good solution is completely
> irreverent to these 2 tech companies because at the end of the day they
> are just trying to make money and please the stock holders.
>
> We have bought the occasional Dell server with Enterprise Red Hat and
> found all sorts of weird little problems. My preferred story was the
> Perl that RHE came with was bleeding edge (for the time of release)
> which at first looked nice. But when I discovered my FreeBSD laptop
> could parse a 500meg log file 4 times faster then the quad core RHE Dell
> server I know something was wrong. It was just the version Perl that RHE
> decided to package up the distribution with. I ended up having to build
> a later version into /usr/local and everything was fine. But is this
> really a good solution? Was this worthy of the word enterprise?
> absolutely not, I mean its not a big deal to build a second Perl into
> /usr/local on RHE but FreeBSD ports seems like a far cleaner and
> professional solution if you ask me, just because its not point and
> click friendly shouldn't be some kind of excuse, to me its and clean and
> pure as I could dream.
>
> We hired a person directly from Oracle full time to build a new database
> project on Oracle. After it was all built and been using it for about 2
> years I just thought it was a bit of a disgrace. Oracle is brittle,
> unreliable and expensive. We had FreeBSD+MySQL along side it the whole
> time and it was just so much more reliable and faster for the same
> amount of hardware.
> Oracle by packaged design is meant to encourage a comparatively massive
> amount of hardware investment compared to what could be achieved with
> MySQL and FreeBSD. I think it is just as much about masking its crap
> performance then any other argument.
>
> I think Oracle is a about of system of making money out of false
> beliefs, it takes full advantage of corporate companies conservative
> beliefs and is probably only the reasonable solution for at best 5% of
> the companies it lives at, its all a matter of opinion which would be
> argued more from how much money a set of individuals are making out of
> it over a better technical solution.
> Some how Oracle want people to believe that a few 100's thousand dollars
> for their software is vastly superior to any other DB in the world is
> just nonsense.
> There is not any other mass scale pieces of software that most company's
> need where there is some how a magically vastly superior solution. There
> is no single/few license $100,000 operating system, no single/few
> license $100,000 excel, no single/few license $100,000 web server.
>
> I guess what I am saying at the end of this is that if you can avoid
> Oracle that is great, I fully recommend you do.
>
> Just because you can buy MySQL Enterprise Server far more cheaply and
> install/deploy it far more easily on more different platforms isn't
> something to be suspicious about, its just a better software solution
> and I recommend you take full advantage of it while you still can.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:49:36 +0200
> From: Ivan Voras <ivoras at freebsd.org>
> Subject: Re: Why no SAP nor DB2 on FreeBSD ?
> To: freebsd-advocacy at freebsd.org
> Message-ID: <h9ptb8$oi0$1 at ger.gmane.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Saifi Khan wrote:
>> Hi all:
>>
>> In continuation of my investigation of Oracle, i also noticed
>> that there is:
>>  . no SAP for FreeBSD
>>  . no DB2 for FreeBSD
>>  . no Sybase ASE for FreeBSD
>>  . no Informix for FreeBSD
>>
>> Discouing PostgreSql installations, effectively enterprise
>> database setups have given FreeBSD a miss.
>> What could be reason for this ?
>
> An obvious guess would be that the userbase is too small and that makes
> it unprofitable to support the products on FreeBSD.
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:20:23 +1000
> From: Tony Theodore <tonyt at logyst.com>
> Subject: Re: Why no SAP nor DB2 on FreeBSD ?
> To: Ivan Voras <ivoras at freebsd.org>
> Cc: freebsd-advocacy at freebsd.org
> Message-ID:
> 	<22166b750909280320r3356c113l8d54e46279f2742f at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> 2009/9/28 Ivan Voras <ivoras at freebsd.org>
>
>> Saifi Khan wrote:
>> > Hi all:
>> >
>> > In continuation of my investigation of Oracle, i also noticed
>> > that there is:
>> >  . no SAP for FreeBSD
>> >  . no DB2 for FreeBSD
>> >  . no Sybase ASE for FreeBSD
>> >  . no Informix for FreeBSD
>> >
>> > Discouing PostgreSql installations, effectively enterprise
>> > database setups have given FreeBSD a miss.
>> > What could be reason for this ?
>>
>> An obvious guess would be that the userbase is too small and that makes
>> it unprofitable to support the products on FreeBSD.
>>
>> Which then leads the FreeBSD community to give those products a miss and
> use alternatives, or find ways of running them without vendor support, which
> further reduces demand.
>
> I guess from an advocacy perspective, it's hard to get enthused about this
> as the alternatives seem more attractive. It's not like hardware drivers
> that do constrain usage and development.
>
> Tony
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:00:37 +0530 (IST)
> From: Saifi Khan <saifi.khan at datasynergy.org>
> Subject: Re: Why no SAP nor DB2 on FreeBSD ?
> To: Ivan Voras <ivoras at freebsd.org>
> Cc: freebsd-advocacy at freebsd.org
> Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.00.0909281659210.98844 at freebsd>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
>
> On Mon, 28 Sep 2009, Ivan Voras wrote:
>
>> Saifi Khan wrote:
>> > Hi all:
>> >
>> > In continuation of my investigation of Oracle, i also noticed
>> > that there is:
>> >  . no SAP for FreeBSD
>> >  . no DB2 for FreeBSD
>> >  . no Sybase ASE for FreeBSD
>> >  . no Informix for FreeBSD
>> >
>> > Discouing PostgreSql installations, effectively enterprise
>> > database setups have given FreeBSD a miss.
>> > What could be reason for this ?
>>
>> An obvious guess would be that the userbase is too small and that makes
>> it unprofitable to support the products on FreeBSD.
>>
>
> Thanks for providing the perspective on the issue.
>
> Here is a rather straight query, "how do we grow the userbase" ?
>
>
> thanks
> Saifi.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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> End of freebsd-advocacy Digest, Vol 295, Issue 1
> ************************************************
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