[plug] [link] Real World software prices

[Leon Brooks]

    http://cin.earthweb.com/news/article.php/1560031

    Oracle is seeing a huge trend towards Linux, says the company's CEO,
    and is pitching its new database clustering technology as the ideal
    way to take advantage of the open source operating system and low-cost
    Intel hardware.

    [...]

    Oracle is seeing tremendous amount of customer interest in Linux,
    according to Ellison.

    "It's hard to believe the numbers," he said. "In 25 years at Oracle,
    I've never seen anything with this much of an uptake. We think Linux
    is a huge opportunity."

    [...]

    Oracle says it has about 900 customers using RAC, although a large
    number of them appear to be in development, and not yet running the
    product for production applications. 

    The company would not say how many of these 900 RAC users are running
    on Linux, although it did mention several who are, including Southwest
    Airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration, and The Statue of
    Liberty Ellis Island Foundation, which is using it for an online
    database which will allow people to look for relatives who entered the
    United States at Ellis Island. The database lists the names of 25
    million people who passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924. 

    RAC on Linux is also powering the online version of game maker
    Electronic Arts' popular PC game The Sims, which that company launched
    earlier this week. 

    Oracle has released as open source several of the pieces required to
    run RAC on Linux, including its Clustered File System software,
    according to Rene Bonvanie, vice president of marketing for Oracle's
    9i database. 

    Pricing for Oracle's 9i database starts at $40,000 per CPU. The RAC
    option costs an additional $20,000 per CPU. Oracle is running a
    half-price promotion on the product, so through February the cost is
    $10,000 per CPU. 

US Dollars. Kind of makes the hardware and OS prices less important, no?

Cheers; Leon