Fresh Rumors Erupt over Red Hat-Oracle Buy

After multiple rumors that Oracle would offer Red Hat support, the new rumor seems to be that Oracle will simply acquire Red Hat. While Oracle certainly has the cash to do this, I can't see the logic from either side. The rumor includes numbers as high as $6b and even the low side appears to be about $5b. It would really complicate things on the Oracle side of the house and would likely cause irreparable damage to the “Open Source” image that Red Hat currently has. While you never know, and Oracle has pulled off the acquisitions of multiple OSS companies such as Sleepycat and Innobase, none of them were the size of Red Hat. I think Red Hat has a vision; one that could not be achieved as a vestige of Oracle. Novell on the other hand seems like a more likely acquisition target, if I had to pick one. They are a bit more closed source friendly due to their history and are struggling right now, so they'd be a bargain. Oracle could also assemble their own support team, or scoop up a smaller distro…not for the distro itself but to get a small talented team. In the end, it seems certain that Oracle will eventually do something in the Linux distro space, it's just not clear what. I'm guessing that when it finally does happen, it will begin a new chapter in the way Linux is looked at by a lot of non-OSS people.
–jeremy
Oracle, Red Hat, Linux, Open Source