October 26, 2006
NOTHING COSTS MORE THAN IT USED TO:
Oracle threatens Red Hat with price war on Linux support (KC Star, 10/26/06)
Oracle Corp. Chief Executive Larry Ellison is shaking up the software industry again, only this time a takeover bid isn’t involved — yet.Posted by Orrin Judd at October 26, 2006 1:32 PMEllison posed a challenge to Linux software leader Red Hat Inc. late Wednesday by announcing that Oracle would begin offering maintenance services for Red Hat products — and charge less for that than Red Hat does. Red Hat shares were crushed by the news.
Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle expects to offer discounts of at least 50 percent. The threat wiped out more than one-quarter of Red Hat’s market value — nearly $1 billion — amid today’s deepening investor worries about the much smaller company’s ability to withstand the challenge.
In other news, Fedora Core 6 and Firefox 2 were released this week, and both are free.
Posted by: jd watson at October 26, 2006 2:19 PMSounds like Oracle is trying to depress the price so they can buy Red Hat for less money.
I'll stick with UBUNTU (which also come out with their newest release today) and Firefox 2.0. They are working well for me.
Posted by: dick at October 26, 2006 8:14 PMI owned 800 shares of Red Hat - thankfully I sold them about 4 months ago. At the end of last year, it was about $28.
Larry Ellison is no dummy. But he is not very nice, either.
Posted by: ratbert at October 26, 2006 9:17 PM