Ellison: I want my own OS

What else do you need when you're a software billionaire on an acquiring binge that shows no let up?

Oracle's Ellison says he considered buying Novell for Suse Linux.

"I'd like to have a complete stack. We're missing an operating system. You could argue that it makes a lot of sense for us to look at distributing and supporting Linux," he said in an interview with the UK-based Financial Times.

Ellison also said that Red Hat poses a different kind of threat now the company has acquired JBoss. "Now that Red Hat… competes with us in middleware, we have to re-look at the relationship -- so does IBM...I don't think Oracle and IBM want another Microsoft in Red Hat," Ellison said.

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Meanwhile Symantec CEO Thompson "joked" that he wants his own monopoly: "I want the technology that gives me a monopoly like Microsoft's. But I'd be a much gentler monopoly."

Thompson said he "sleeps like a baby" despite Microsoft's moves into the security space, branding it a "Johnny Come-Lately whose talk is yet to be backed up by any action."

"Microsoft has to build a track record and credibility which is sorely lacking. I only worry about what I can control. I can't control what company A or company B is doing whether it's Microsoft or whoever," said Thompson.

He added that Symantec stopped being an anti-virus firm six years ago and with the Veritas buy in 2004 competes with the likes of big boys CA, Microsoft and Oracle not just the anti-virus guys.

"We are in the protection business. Not like Tony Soprano... but we see a need to move the protection closer to the data."

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