Dr. Dobb's Journal January 2000
Chances are Larry Ellison -- the brilliant, but boneheaded, bossman at Oracle -- is not a warm and fuzzy kind of guy. Not the kind of buddy you'd belly up to the bar with, one hand hanging onto a brew, the other his shoulder, singing college fight songs after the big game. No, he's definitely more of a my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy.
For instance, in a display of pique that rolled eyes even in consumer-crazed Silicon Valley, Ellison has threatened to sue San Jose, California, because the city won't let him land his personal jet at city-owned San Jose International Airport after 11:30 at night or before 6:30 in the morning. "San Jose has no right to tell me when I can land my airplane," Ellison said.
In an effort to improve the quality of life for city residents who live near the airport, San Jose prohibits airplanes of a certain size or greater from landing in the middle of the night. Small planes, or those experiencing air-traffic delays or mechanical difficulties, can land. Ellison's top-of-the-line Gulfstream Aerospace G-5 jet falls into the too-big-to-land-at-night category. It is worth noting, of course, that not only does Ellison not live near the airport, he doesn't even live in San Jose. But then laws put in place for the public welfare apparently don't apply to Ellison -- he's continued to land late at night at least nine times over the past two years, ignoring pleas from sleepy residents and the city.
Still, Ellison did manage to wake up and smell the cappuccino when it came to selling programming tools. And in okaying plans to "give away" Oracle's development tools -- database servers (including Oracle 8i and JServer), Internet tools (JDeveloper, Designer, and the like), application servers, and more -- for all supported platforms (NT, Linux, and so on) via its Developer Portal that's part of the Oracle Technology Network (OTN; http://technet.oracle.com/), Ellison clearly took a bold step. According to the scheme, you can join the OTN (at no charge, of course) and download and use any and all Oracle tools. You also get help, gain admission to conferences, access online forums, and obtain early releases -- all at no cost. You don't put a penny in Ellison's pocket until commercial projects are released, at which time you must apply for deployment licenses. (Alternatively, you can opt to pay for CD-based OTN subscriptions.) Of course, cynics might question the motivation behind the OTN program: Is Ellison trying to help developers, streamline a wrinkled Oracle development-tools sales machine, lay out a new map for corporate survival, or simply stick it to competitors (mainly Microsoft)? In truth, it's probably a little of everything.
Whatever the motivation, it seems likely that Ellison and company have done their part in kicking over the development-tools applecart. What with open source coming from one side and programs like OTN from the other, tool vendors trying to survive in the traditional marketspace are going to feel a pinch. No, just slapping a price of a couple of thousand dollars or so on a product and putting it up for sale on a web site isn't going to cut it anymore. The ready availability of very good, yet relatively inexpensive (or free), tools means programmers have too many options to plop down big bucks for unproven toolkits. Cash-rich Oracle has an advantage, of course, in that it can afford to give away its tools. Competitors with smaller war chests, tighter margins, less brazen leaders, and no back-end platform of their own, probably can't take the chance of giving away tools. Even Microsoft, which competes with Oracle on the server and tools fronts, would probably have a hard time clearing the bar that Ellison has set.
Will legions of developers and organizations abandon the tools they currently use for Oracle's "free" offer? Not likely, unless Oracle also revamps its historically onerous and expensive licensing terms and fees. Nonetheless, a lot of folks (Oracle claims more than 400,000 so far) will download the tools, give them a whirl, use them for personal projects, and be up to speed should the right opportunity present itself. Meanwhile, we'll probably see marginal tool vendors drop by the wayside.
As for Ellison, he will keep on being the spoiled rich kid whose toys include jet planes and racing yachts, and who thinks he should get his way because, well, he's Larry. Hey, when he moves into a house at the end of the runaway, then I'll listen to what he has to say. In the meantime, thanks for the cool tools.
Jonathan Erickson
editor-in-chief
jerickson@ddj.com