Linux, Oracle and Solaris

I think Matt Asay doesn´t get the point with his article:

But this is the very reason that I can't see even Oracle, with all its market power, being able to stem the tide toward Linux and away from Unix.

Let´s take away all this general-purpose stuff and let´s assume just for a second, that Larry just wants to buy Sun for creating database appliances. From a sole database and applications view they doesn´t need to stem towards or away from anything. To give you an example: Is it relevant to you what operating system is used in your NetApp Filer? Well … the operating system of a database appliance is irrelevant, too. There is just a single point of interest: What is the best plattform for my application with the least time to market and the least amount of bucks spend to build it? This breaks down to a lot of technical questions. Do i put my money into a filesystem into development like Btrfs or do i use the market-available ZFS for example? Can i use DTrace or is there a need to develop your own tracing framework integrating application and the operating system? Can i use the same operating system from 1 proc to 256 procs (and no, SGI Altix is something completely different)? And so on … I wouldn´t bet my money on Linux on such an appliance in the light of the situation, that Larry would own Solaris after a possible merger. You have to remember: The customers don´t buy a server Oracle because of running Linux. The customer wants buy it because they want to run Oracle. Many comments in the press seem to forget this fact. And than there are dozens of other reasons for Oracle to keep Solaris: The existing business for example. It isn´t that way, that Sun doesn´t sell servers anymore. There has do be a reason for being cash-flow positive ;)