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| Oracle's Offering and Red Hat's Response - Updated |
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Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 03:55 AM EDT
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You may wish to view Larry Ellison's keynote for yourself, in which he cited the SCO Group's litigation, believe it or not, claiming it is holding back Linux adoption in the enterprise. I expect to see an IBM lawyer holding up a chart with that quotation on it, in some hearing soon. Just kidding. The vendors aren't offering indemnification, Ellison said, and because of SCO, there's all this uncertainty and doubt about intellectual property. He says he will offer indemnification. In the Q&A at the end, he was asked if Oracle was planning to buy SCO to bring that uncertainty to an end. No, was the answer. If he thought they were going to be victorious, he'd buy them in a New York minute. No uncertainty or doubt about that. So who is he kidding? Red Hat already has their response on their website, with a big sign on their homepage that reads: "Unfakeable Linux - Red Hat responds." The most important thing they say is that it's not true that you must upgrade to the most recent version to get support, as Ellison claimed in his speech. Here's what Red Hat says about that: Support & Maintenance Lifecycle
Q: In order to get support and maintenance for Red Hat, do you need to upgrade to the most recent version?
A: No. Red Hat subscribers enjoy support and updates for all versions for up to 7 years. Throughout that time, Red Hat provides regular maintenance releases as part of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription. This is supplemented through our support services by a 'hot-fix' process that provides critical bug fixes on customer-specific basis. Oracle "reserves the right to desupport certain Enterprise Linux program releases" as part of their Oracle Enterprise Linux support policies.
Update, Thurs. 6:27 PM EDT: Novell's CMO John Dragoon now has a response on his blog as well: We agree that Linux is an enterprise class operating platform and that it deserves world class support. In fact, Novell has been providing world class support for operating system platforms for over 23 years. We provide the innovation, quality assurance and 24×7 global support for Linux that is only available direct from the manufacturer and not just for Linux server platforms but the entire spectrum of Linux operating platforms including server, desktop, thin client, real time, and point of service - all from one company....Linux is indeed ready for the enterprise. It’s no longer about cost. Linux is being deployed in the enterprise because of its performance, reliability and security advantages.
Having another major technology company support this reality is good.
I say, “come on in, the water is fine”. On indemnification, from the Oracle FAQ: Do customers need to be concerned about IP ownership issues? -- Oracle is committed to the success of the Linux platform and will stand behind our support offering by providing indemnification against intellectual property claims raised against our customers. Well. That is sufficiently vague. HP offers indemnnification, by the way, since 2003. So does Novell, since 2004. So does Red Hat, since 2004. And OSRM offers insurance solutions through Lloyd's of London on Linux and other Open Source software. OpenLogic just announced that it will indemnify a whole list of smaller projects as well, and they are up front and clear about what you get: OpenLogic’s indemnification offering is available to all customers who have purchased support from OpenLogic. OpenLogic will provide indemnification for intellectual property infringements, including defense of claims, repair and replacement of infringing software, and up to four times the value of the contract for damage awards. How can Ellison not know this? Progeny already offers backporting bug fixes, by the way. Just so you know.
Some other issues Red Hat lists: Red Hat & JBoss Subscriptions
Q: Does Oracle's announcement include support for the Red Hat Application Stack, JBoss, Hibernate, Red Hat GFS, Red Hat Cluster Suite, Red Hat Directory Server, or Red Hat Certificate System?
A: No. Oracle does not support any of these leading open source products.
Hardware Compatibility
Q: Oracle says their Linux support includes the same hardware compatibility and certifications as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Is this true?
A: No. Oracle has stated they will make changes to the code independently of Red Hat. These changes will not be tested during Red Hat's hardware testing and certification process, and may cause unexpected behavior. Hence Red Hat hardware certifications are invalidated.
And there's plenty more. I suggest you read the entire page, to clear your head after listening to the keynote.
Oracle says it will offer free binaries. How? Oracle will take Red Hat's code, strip out the Red Hat trademarks, and then add bug fixes, and then recompile. That recompilation is how they offer binaries. Yes. A legal workaround. Hey, he says, this is capitalism. Oracle is competing. Yes. But is it in a manner that reflects community standards and values? They will supply the bug fixes to everyone immediately, by the way. But given the concerns Red Hat raises, I wonder who'll touch them? Once you do, you are Oracle's for life. Joke, joke. Note some issues Red Hat brings up: Binary Compatibility
Q: Will Oracle's Linux support be binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux?
A: There is no way to guarantee that changes made by Oracle will maintain API (Application Programming Interface) or ABI (Application Binary Interface) compatibility; there may be material differences in the code. Compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux can only be verified by Red Hat's internal test suite.
Source Code Compatibility
Q: Will Oracle's product result in a "fork" of the operating system?
A: Yes. The changes Oracle has stated they will make will result in a different code base than Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Simply put, this derivative will not be Red Hat Enterprise Linux and customers will not have the assurance of compatibility with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux ecosystem.
Updates
Q: Oracle says they will provide the same updates as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Can they do this?
A: There are multiple requirements to building binary compatible software. One piece is the source code; another is the build and test environment. While Oracle may be able to take the source code at some point after a Red Hat update release, obviously their build and test environment will inherently be different than that for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For similar reasons, there is no guarantee that the source code for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux update will work correctly when integrated into Oracle's modified Linux code base.
The CEOs of Dell and HP, among others, say this is a great leap forward, in video clips at the end. Things are beginning to smell funny, folks. There does appear to be some kind of enterprise makeover attempt, to remake Linux in their image. Why would anyone imagine that grabbing Red Hat's work product and cutting Red Hat off from its own customers would be progress? And if Red Hat is put out of business, what will Oracle sell then? What the corporate dudes never do grasp is that you can't coopt FOSS past a point, because FOSS programmers won't work for nothing to buy them yachts. That's not why they did this. And Linux is a living product, a process that never stands still. That means the enterprise need the programmers to keep toiling away. But if it gets any more smarmy, most of them just won't. So when it gets to looking like their code is being misused, they'll just leave the enterprise to try to write it all themselves, and you know if they could do that, they would have already. Oracle's prices are designed to kill Red Hat, I'm hearing. But if you read the Oracle FAQ, what you get for $99 a year isn't much. Well, you get what you pay for. You get the following: "Access to software and updates through the Unbreakable Linux Network." For Enterprise Linux Premier Support, it'll cost you $1,199 a year per system up to 2 CPUs, or $1,999 a year for unlimited CPUs, and you get "Network access, 24x7 support with global coverage, plus back port of fixes to earlier releases as well as Oracle Lifetime Support." Take a look at Red Hat's fine grained offerings, including the TechnicalAccount Management service, where your assigned support person practically lives with you, and make your own comparison.
Sun and HP also seem to be trying to cut Red Hat out of the loop with their customers, but they seem to be using Red Hat as shipped.
Sun offers this service. Then there's
Sun's Software Premium Service Plan, which offers this: "You have access to the latest software version updates and upgrades, and avoid separate upgrade licensing fees."
HP offers a service
also. Of course, they'd like to sell some hardware too: Integrated hardware/software support
HP Support Plus 24 delivers comprehensive, multivendor hardware and software services for Red Hat Linux environments. Working with your IT team, HP Services engineers deliver four-hour response onsite hardware support and over-the-phone software support 24x7x365. Established escalation procedures enlist specialized expertise from HP and selected third-party hardware and software vendors. But they'll support the software only also.
Progeny will customize Linux just for your needs, in addition to backporting bug fixes:
Need a customized Linux platform for your product or service?
Perhaps a modified Linux OS would better suit your needs than the "one size fits all" standard distributions. Maybe your organization lacks the skills or resources to develop and maintain the underlying Linux platform in-house.
Progeny can assist you with a wide range of Linux platform needs. For customers who simply need to maintain an older version of Red Hat® Linux® while deciding on a transition path, Progeny Transition Service delivers security patches for Red Hat Linux 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, and 9. If your platform needs are more extensive, Platform Services allows you to outsource any or all of the essential processes of custom Linux platforms... Making Linux more successful in the enterprise is the right goal. But not if you kill off what makes Linux desirable, namely ethics. It's the value add of FOSS, and if the corporate guys don't figure that out soon, they really will kill the Golden Goose. Let me explain in one sentence why: Cut throat competition destroys software. The Open Source process is built on the the same principles that work in any scientific environment. You share knowledge. You cooperate. Business always wants to balkanize. They very nearly killed Unix doing exactly that. And here they go with Linux, trying the same stupid thing. Brand X Linux. But you know what the song says, and it's true: There Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing, Baby.
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| Authored by: entre on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 04:03 AM EDT |
| If necessary. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 04:29 AM EDT |
... I'd rather be buying from an organisation with a history in the Linux
community. Not for any altruistic notions, but because the level of support for
them within the community through things like Fedora. Redhat have also
"read the market right" for quite a while.
In terms of pricing, Oracles prices aren't good enough to persuade me. But
realistically the numbers we're talking here are not material to a strategic
business decision.
When I look at suppliers and especially open source suppliers, there is a matter
trust. Do I trust Larry Ellison not to pull the rug out from under me? Not at
the moment. Being misleading in a keynote like this is not a good start at
engendering trust in the FOSS community. Compare with IBM's approach of building
trust. To be a successful supplier in the FOSS community you have to recognise
one thing above others "IT'S A COMMUNITY" and although you may be in
competition with your neighbour, you should still be a good neighbour. Oracle
have yet to demonstrate that it understands the difference between competition
with MS and FOSS
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: N. on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 04:45 AM EDT |
If you accept forking as a practice (and RedHat do - there's a Linux distro out
there already which is just RedHat minus the trademarks, maybe more than one
distro, I forget the lineage of the various distros), then Oracle is doing no
wrong. The fact that Oracle wants to compete and wipe out RedHat is also nothing
to be concerned about - no one's going to force people to ditch RedHat.
As for Oracle offering cheaper support, but inferior support - isn't this an
issue that should be decided by the market?
Obviously Oracle are publicising an edited version of the truth, but that's
marketing for you.
An Oracle Linux fork is interesting. It may be a poor business decision. It may
be bad for potential Oracle customers. It may have very bad consequences for
Oracle. But companies, like people, should be allowed to learn from their
forthcoming mistakes.
So, this is a good article, however I strongly disagree with the implication
that companies who get into the Linux distro biz are honour-bound to abide by
the community's ethics and spirit. Regardless of how you interpret the type of
"freedom" the GPL intends to promote, Oracle has the right to do what
it's doing. If it annoys the community, it will get minimal community support
and will probably become irrelevant as a result. If Oracle Linux survives, then
it's just another distro competing for clients.
---
N.
(Now almost completely Windows-free)[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: feldegast on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 04:45 AM EDT |
Please make links clickable
---
IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2006 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 05:36 AM EDT |
This should illustrate the need for a community based distro that all the
vendors use, such as Debian, so these petty marketing attacks can stop.
Oracle should also realize that so long as they follow Red Hat's distro, that's
all they'll be doing, is following. And what happens when the day comes Red Hat
decides to do things differently and Oracle and their customers are left either
having to adapt or accept their free ride is over scrambling to recover?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 05:36 AM EDT |
Whatever IP they've built on top of it, the relational database was IBM's (Ted
Codd's) idea. Oracle were just smart enough to pick up the ball whilst IBM were
wondering what it was. With Linux IBM have joined an existing game whilst Oracle
sit on the sideline talking about how their ball is the best. Sooner or later
they'll find that your ball is no use if you don't join the game.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 05:37 AM EDT |
| in that regard I sometimes hope that the BSDs remain impopular... [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 05:39 AM EDT |
| having another large supplier supporting and marketing Linux can't be all bad. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: IMANAL on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 06:20 AM EDT |
While it is good that Oracle will offer all this support, I'm curious if that
also includes the Linux desktop (e.g. Gnome etc). He said it was limited to
"Priority 1 bugs", but will not customers expect desktop bugfixes too?
I'm not sure he really addressed that.
---
--------------------------
IM Absolutely Not A Lawyer[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: gbl on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 06:31 AM EDT |
| You have to remember who Oracle is talking to. They sell database solutions to
corporations who want to simplify their support requirements. In that
situation, Linux is the minor part of the deal, it's Oracle that costs the big
bucks.
So, not having to deal with two different support organisations each
blaming the other for a problem is worth paying over the odds for Linux
support.
Well, that's the theory. I can't see Oracle not supporting
their database products on stock Redhat Linux etc. In fact, it is very
surprising that Oracle and Redhat did not come to an agreement similar to that
between Sun and Oracle. Maintaining a fork, tracking Redhat and explaining to
customers how Oracle Linux is the same as, but better than, Redhat Linux is not
a trivial matter.
---
If you love some code, set it free. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: wizlayer on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 06:45 AM EDT |
Forgive my ignorance, but I haven't really read up on this
indemnification thing...
Let's just say that I offer indemnification for several
flavors of Linux to x amount of customers. I would assume
that people are paying for this "indemnification?" Kinda
like software insurance... (more like it's available for
free, but I've going to find a way to charge ignants for
it).
Assuming that these jokers are actually buying this
"service" from me, what happens when SCO looses and it's
revealed to the public (even more-so than now) that SCO is
flatul... well... "fraudulent" I guess would be a nice
way to put it.
Do I get sued for selling indemnification for a product
that obviously has more halos than the Pope? Wouldn't
that make me just as much of a con-artist as Daryl? Would
I have to give the money back? If so, could I in turn sue
SCO because of my losses?
What about people and entities who have lost money because
they:
1. actually bought these indulgences.
2. were afraid to go to Linux after hearing SCOs claims
and spent gobs of money on a lesser product (something
like MSdone).
Heck... I'd want my money back, and the people running
around saying that I'm going to burn in a lake of
everlasting fire if I don't buy their papers (SCO or the
indemnification merchants if such is the case) are the
people I would look to for restitution...
That said (and I know I sound sarcastic, but I just can't
understand why people are doing this), I'll cry freedom
even when the guts of my OS are removed from my hard-drive
(cheesy reference to BraveHeart)... Not like it would
ever happen but if it does, I'm moving to another country.
There's no way SCO will get away with this, so why bother
with the indemnification stuff except for more green
papers? This is supposed to be open source, released
under the GPL. It should be free of greed.
Just my thoughts and questions,
WizLayer
---
----
SCOs soon-to-be theme:
"I fought the law, and the... law won.
I fought the law, and the... law won."[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Brak on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 07:25 AM EDT |
How is this different from CentOS? <a>http://centos.org</a> They
recompile the RHEL sources and remove the RedHat copyrighted images, like Oracle
plans to do.
Of course, they're not a multi-gazillion dollar corporation, just a small group
making enterprise-class server software available to the masses for a free
download.
But where's the money in that???[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 07:29 AM EDT |
While Red Hat may claim to upper 7 years of support for older releases, in
practice they don't. The company I work at is running RHEL 3 on 64-bit
hardware, having lots of problems, and are not getting anything like decent
support from Red Hat - they just want us to move to RHEL 4. It often takes a
month to get somebody from Red Hat looking into a bug, after filijng into their
system as a paying enterprise customer.
We are seriously looking at alternatives and if that's Oracle, who cares? If
vendor oftware is certified on SUSE and Red Hat, it'll work on Oracle, too.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: MeinZy on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 07:47 AM EDT |
He's been coddled, supported, and raised in an environment of love and trust.
Now he's heading out into the big world with abundant talent. And being
approached by an Enterprise that wants to utilize those talents for their own
growth and enrichment. His foundations will be tested. And there's not much
one can do except have faith in his underpinnings. It is an anxious period of
development, but a right of passage that is unavoidable.
We watch and hope that others do not corrupt that which has been carefully
nurtured. We know many could and would. We hope his positive energy and
continued support base can help direct his path. But, ultimately, much is now
out of our hands.
I am not a Sys Admin, professional programmer, or directly involved in
OpenSource development. I'm a neighbor who's watched Junior grow up. I'm
convinced he's been infused with all the right stuff and still has a solid
support base. He'll have good times, bad times and a heartbreak or two. But he
seems to be as prepared as one could hope.
Good luck Junior, it's rough out there.
---
Zy -- 'Square peg in a round Earth' - But working on those corners[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 08:20 AM EDT |
As long as I have watched Linux I thought the idea has been a shared software
base with free code and paid support. Redhat Enterprise is really the product
of a lot of folks from a lot of places glued together with Redhat code and
supported by Redhat. All the releases are that way. The main differences are
the contents of the package, the quality of the packaging, and the support you
can buy. Redhat already forked itself with Fedora so it could set it's own pace
of changes. I assume that is because they thought the business side was
sufficiently mature to slow down and maintain a stable platform while the gamers
and other power users could continue at the bleeding edge. Ellison now probably
wants to lock in an even slower development path tuned to Oracle. If that's
what he does it's not a big deal. He becomes the sole target for "Oracle's
down". That is probably good for everyone. Rooting it as a Redhat spinoff
I would take it as a signal to buy Redhat for the rest of my servers as things
would be very similar. OTOH, if he thinks he can grab the rest of the
application world by getting control of the Oracle servers he is playing in the
pirahana tank. Rather messy but interesting to watch. Think train wreck. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Steve Martin on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 08:20 AM EDT |
And here they go with Linux, trying the same stupid thing.
Brand X Linux.
I was once involved in a series of
correspondences with a person who was curious about Linux and wanted to discuss
several topics regarding it. At one point in the discussion, he asked which
distribution I preferred. When I responded to him that I had tried many but
settled on Slackware, he was curious as to why I preferred it over (say) Red
Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, or any of the others.
One of the reasons I cited
was that I preferred the look and feel of GNOME (which was still included with
Slackware at the time) or KDE to the homogenized, modified, one-size-fits-many
looks of some of the other distros' desktops. I guess I'm a bit of a purist (or
maybe I'm just old and ornery), but I felt (and still feel) that Slackware is
more of a "pure" Linux distribution, possibly the purest of those still in
existence. Everything in Slackware is stable, tested, and proven. KDE looks like
KDE, kdm looks like kdm, and so forth. GCC and glibc are stable, compatible, and
solid. I don't have to worry any flakiness introduced into the individual
components by the vendor in the interest of "branding".
(I think I
might also in part have gotten this attitude from Red Hat's debacle in including
the so-called "gcc
2.96" in one of their distros, which turned out to be a disaster in terms of
compatibility -- I mean, the silly thing wouldn't even compile the kernel. Red
Hat had to include another version of the compiler in their distro, renamed [as
I recall] "kgcc" for those who wanted to compile a kernel, but didn't tell
anyone until the distro hit the streets and people started complaining that GCC
was broken.)
I'm sure there are people out there who prefer not to have
to worry about differences between desktops, and who appreciate the efforts to
"standardize" (if that's the word) the look and feel of their distro. In
fairness, I can see some value in the look-and-feel of Linux being familiar to
new users. However, I felt that to customize the look and feel to the extent
that even the splash screen was cooked so that the name of the desktop didn't
even appear (and thus in my mind robbed the developers of their due credit) was
somehow wrong.
---
"When I say something, I put my name next to it."
-- Isaac Jaffee, "Sports Night" [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 08:22 AM EDT |
Oracle has publicly said many times that their (database, big enterprise)
customers are not satisfied with the RH support, and that they are concerned
with that. They want to push seriously Linux as the standard platform for IA32,
and the support troubles with RH is a hindrance to that strategy.
Oracle is no Linux friend per se, they are interested in a platform for their
DBMS. To wit: On IA64, Solaris is the prefered platform, not Linux. (See
http://www.itjungle.com/tug/tug011206-story02.html, for example.)
Looking from the view of big enterprise with multi-million contracts, they
simply report the current situation. The support of RH is really bad, compared
to high-end (platin) support of Sun or Oracle. When I open a priority 1 call
with Sun or Oracle and this is not resolved within a day, I have the CEO Germany
jumping and the developer on the phone. If the call is still open a few days
later, the developer is flown in from the US if necessary. Try to get that level
of support from RH -- good luck with it. We tried it and failed, they simply
didn't have the resources for that. (Novell is a bit better here, btw.) PJ can
present all those RH support options as much as she wants; in practice they are
not there or not sufficient.
Therefore, the move of Oracle was on the horizon. It is strictly targeted
towards their DBMS enterprise customers, and I doubt that they will have good
support for normal folks or even mid-sized companies. (Their DBMS support there
ain't one of the best either.) But for the kind of companies that I work for
(>50,000 employees, multi-national on several continents, IT staff >1,000
(outsourced staff included)), this ain't a bad move.
We will have to see how good they are with it; but it will probably not take
much to be better than RH, judging from my experience.
This is a field report from the automotive industry, and not from reading
responses on Web sites. ;-)
Oh yes, and to say that the SCO suit does not hamper Open Source adoption any
more, is far away from reality, at least where I work. We do consulting on the
executive level, and there this lawsuit was successful in establishing FU&D.
It doesn't matter that SCO will loose; the C*Os look at the litigation costs
that IBM has and don't know how to mitigate that risk.
The RH indemnification is worthless. Please note that the link cited by PJ is
press article. Try to search on RH's site for indemnification, and good luck to
find it. RH has an Open Source Assurance program
(http://www.redhat.com/rhel/details/assurance/), and there they promise to
replace software that has IP issues. Furthermore they promise to
"help" with their Open Source Now fund -- but again good luck in
finding specific information about that fund on their Web site besides press
releases. (It is not linked to from the Assurance pages, and site search doesn't
find it either.) But that fund is only for developers and not for users, and
they have pledged 1 Million $ -- now, let's estimate how much IBM has payed
already?
I.e., RH DO NOT provide indemnification against lawsuits. To imply such in the
article above is simply incorrect. They have an assurance and a legal support
program, but no indemnification. If Oracle steps in here, I'm all for it.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: tz on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 08:38 AM EDT |
If they don't get it, they will either slide and eventually fall (but maybe
after getting more enterprises to adopt Linux), or they will figure it out.
Linux itself, at least the odd numbered kernel series is a learning and
evolutionary process. Keep what works, reject what doesn't.
Though I chuckle when I hear "enterprise grade support", since most
places run Microsoft, and even if things bluescreen daily, their
"support" is buy into their site licensing program for big bucks and
we won't sue you. But you have to figure out the BSoDs yourself or pay per
incident (and their support line compares unfavorably to the Psychic Friends
network).
But we'll see. Oracle might be a big database fish, but RedHat, Novell/SUSE,
and Ubuntu aren't going away or even staying still.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: nadams on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 09:14 AM EDT |
PJ,
Surely you see that Larry Ellison isn't the only money grubbing
type in this. RedHat is just as guilty of trying to scare its customers into
vendor lock-in:
Binary Compatibility
Q: Will
Oracle's Linux support be binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise
Linux?
A: There is no way to guarantee that changes made by Oracle will
maintain API (Application Programming Interface) or ABI (Application Binary
Interface) compatibility; there may be material differences in the code.
Compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux can only be verified by Red Hat's
internal test suite.
(Emphasis added). And
also:
Updates
Q: Oracle says they will provide the
same updates as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Can they do this?
A: There are
multiple requirements to building binary compatible software. One piece is the
source code; another is the build and test environment. While Oracle may be able
to take the source code at some point after a Red Hat update release, obviously
their build and test environment will inherently be different than that for Red
Hat Enterprise Linux. For similar reasons, there is no guarantee that the source
code for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux update will work correctly when integrated
into Oracle's modified Linux code base.
That theme is
repeated throughout the response. Red Hat is trying to leverage their "internal
test suite" and very proprietary "certifications" to lock their customers in.
Period.
All corporations, without exception, exist primarily to
make money. Microsoft, Red Hat, SCO, IBM, Oracle; they are all the same in that
respect. We would all do well to keep that in mind at all times... [ Reply to This | # ]
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- Pot, kettle, black... - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 09:25 AM EDT
- Pot, kettle, black... - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 09:29 AM EDT
- Its not lock in -- its reality. - Authored by: sprag on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 09:35 AM EDT
- Pot, kettle, black... - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 09:38 AM EDT
- Pot, kettle, black... - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 02:04 PM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 09:21 AM EDT |
I bought Red Hat 9 in a Box and within 6 months RH dropped all support! I
bought and installed this Retail Boxed version of RH 9 into 2 businesses!
It was not nice of RH to drop support so quickly, in order to move the retail
product customer to Fedora (or in a Microsoft way, to move them to the
enterprise fee structure)!
Due to the embarassment of this RH move it was THE LAST TIME I paid RH a dime...
and I have advised my customers to be wary of their knee jerk past actions that
did not reflect their period of promised support even for the boxed RH9
purchases that I advised before!
As for Ubuntu/Edubuntu LTS... well that chick needs 6 months to a year for LTSP
(still not done for Edgy), printing, easy network install, etc to be finished
before they rolled out. Hopefully they will have it all done by this next
spring as I don't see it with Edgy being done yet either... then they should
offer LTS (long term support). All this hype about LTS ended up turning many
folks into beta testers for an unfinished product (another Microsoft move)?
Hopefully by next spring LTSP, printing, easy network install AND ALL THE STUFF
up on the LISTS that was told to Ubuntu BEFORE 6.06 LTS was released is fixed
and done... ONLY then should they offer LONG TERM SUPPORT and only then will I
recommend it to any business user who is looking for a turn-key out of the box
easy to run and easy to network solution.
Integrety is lacking in the rush, sometimes... haste makes waste, and both RH
and Ubuntu have wasted alot of folks time by implying that something WAS, when
it WAS NOT.
I still use both Fedora and *buntu for personal playing around, etc (and K12LTSP
for non-mission critical uses), but as of right now, the only distro I
recommend, is Novell SuSE...!
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| Authored by: cricketjeff on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 09:34 AM EDT |
| Debian [ Reply to This | # ]
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- Huh? - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 10:46 AM EDT
- Huh? - Authored by: cricketjeff on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 11:01 AM EDT
- One word ++ - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 04:01 PM EDT
- One word - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 06:36 PM EDT
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 09:46 AM EDT |
Oracle offers support target exactly to the use of their database
infractructure. We are, in the context of software, talking big iron here.
It makes perfect business sense that they offer support for the whole software
stack. And it is a strength of Free Software that theycan do this,
competently.
They take away business that RedHat would not have been able to provide well,
anyway.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 09:46 AM EDT |
I remember when Red Hat bought JBoss...everyone was saying it was a smart buy
but it put Red Hat in direct competition with several of its partners. Now I am
not familiar with JBoss and what it's competition is but I remember Novel
changing to a different application server because of this move by Red Hat.
If I remember correctly, the different articles listed Oracle as one of Red
Hat's partners they may be offended and respond (my words there...not a quote).
Now this is all my opinion and may be well off the mark...BUT it just seems
funny that they are only targeting Red Hat here (...and yes i know that Red Hat
has the largest market share, Oracle uses them A LOT, etc. etc.). I just think
that if this were a CHEAP Linux move then Larry would have included the #2
Enterprise Linux provider too...and that means Novel SLEs (and let's not forget
Ubuntu too).
I feel this is just a "you mess with me then i will mess with you"
response from Oracle to Red Hat. Given Larry's legendary cowboy mentality, i
think it makes sense.
Now the ramifications of his move will be interesting to watch unfold. Either
his new support will take off and completely undercut the current successful
Linux business model (which i'm sure microsoft is watching closely) or it will
bomb completely and no other mega company will try this again (we can only hope
and pray for this one). Either way, it definitely follows Larry's risky
business behavior.
Personally, I think it will be the latter because in the articles above it lists
the many products that Oracle will not support. I think that will have an
impact in the end. What company is going to split support between two vendors
just to save some money? My company doesn't do it.
Again...all this is just my opinion and i may be wrong...it just feels like a
normal Larry move to me though.
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| Authored by: Latesigner on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 09:57 AM EDT |
What is clear is that if your business buys into this, the smell itself should
send you running in the opposite direction, you're not going to get too much
sympathy down the road when one of these guys ***** you over.
---
The only way to have an "ownership" society is to make slaves of the rest of us.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 10:23 AM EDT |
PJ I am terribly disappointed in you. You and others cannot see the forest for
the trees. What is Oracle's motiviation for providing Linux support? To get
businesses to buy their products.
Oracle, by providing Linux support, is trying to push more Oracle products.
This approach is a direct assualt at Microsoft. Microsoft provides support for
both Operating System and DBMs. That's a huge advantage. The DMBs becomes a
complete package with Microsoft. With Oracle it does not. You buy the DBMs
from Oracle then you have to shop for an Operating System from another company,
then you have to figure out who to call for support when something goes wrong.
Which is easier, calling two or more companies or calling one company? Calling
one company. Ellison understands this.
Outside of the Oracle world, I do not see this having any effect on any Linux
distro. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 10:32 AM EDT |
An an experienced RHEL SA, I think that Oracle has done the right thing for its
business, and customers.
RHEL is a kernel, the basic GNU utils, and a number of free applications. RHEL
is commited to supporting all of those application without bias. Oracle (the db
product and application suite) requires fundemental configuration and tuning of
the OS which may adversly affect other applications (async IO, bigmem, and
storage configuration come to mind).
By Releasing their own derivative OS, they can concentrate on OS issues that are
important to Oracle, and not worry about compromising the performance/stability
of other applications in the RHEL suite. It's win-win. RH no longer has to
support a closed-source third party application. Oracle no longer has a
dependency on an OS vendor who doesn't always work in Oracle's best interests.
Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. This is a good thing for Linux.
Thank you for your time,
Frank Russo
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 10:33 AM EDT |
In this case, Oracle isn't doing anything wrong per-se. It's not doing anything
different than Whitebox, CentOS, or any other RedHat based distro. It's a
rebranding, plain and simple. In reality, this is about RH buying JBoss. It
makes RHEL a complete software stack for web services and makes Red Hat a direct
threat to a large part of Oracle's business.
If Oracle can provide better support, great for them, and great for customers.
That being said, I'm sticking with RH. I've actually had good support from them
in the past, although others appear to have different experinces. The thing
that I really like about RH is that they directly support development efforts of
various tools (kernel devs, GCC, etc). To me, that's part of being a good
citizen of the FLOSS software world. Other corporate distros that behave in
this manner (like Novell/SUSE) are also a good choice. What has Oracle added
back into the stack? That's the question I have. If I'm going to pay for
support, I might as well have that money go back into improving the products
that I'm paying for.
-TomcaT-[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Observer on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 11:41 AM EDT |
| > Oracle's prices are designed to kill Red Hat, I'm hearing.
I'm
not too worried. There's already at least one free (as in beer) distribution
based on Red Hat's Enterprise Linux code, minus the trademarks and
support. The one I'm thinking of is CentOS (if memory serves me). There are
differences, of course. CentOS is free, but doesn't promise *any* support,
other than downloads for patches. However, I don't think they make any changes
to the source, so it really isn't a "fork". However, you do get real RH code,
without having to pay for it, so long as you are willing to support it
yourself.
Point is, there are already distributions, "priced to kill Red
Hat", but none of them have succeeded in killing Red Hat yet. Novell, if they
can get their act together, just might overtake Red Hat in the enterprise
market, but that will be based on their ability to provide full blown enterprise
support, on code that they are actively putting their own blood, sweat and tears
into. (Well, sort of. Really, it's SUSE Linux, but they are still supporting
both the free and commercial versions.) For them, if they succeed, it will be
because they provided a better service, rather than just because they were
cheaper.
Remember: Oracle is interested in selling Databases,
not Linux distributions. I've built a few Red Hat/Oracle servers in my day, and
frankly, it's a bit of a pain. The Oracle database wants to "own" the box.
Typically, you need to run several custom System level patches on the box anyway
before you can even install the Oracle software, and even kernel level
optimizations are not uncommon. It makes sense to me for them to do the
"tweaks" to the OS before they send it to you. Then, you end up with one,
integrated, and hopefully certified install. Larry will continue to grandstand
and make all kinds of goofy claims, as he has done forever, but there's a chance
that, if they stick to being a DATABASE vendor and not a LINUX DISTRIBUTION
vendor, then everyone just might come out better in the end.
(Of course, if
you ask me, I'd much rather run PostgreSQL, but that's another story
altogether..... ;-)
---
The Observer [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Jude on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 11:59 AM EDT |
Larry Ellison is the guy who goes to a potluck dinner party and brings a bag of
popcorn as his contribution. He wants to enjoy the work of others without
making any real contribution of his own.
The obvious problem is the result of everyone doing the same thing. A table
full of the cheapest available junk foods doesn't make a very good meal.
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| Authored by: rsmith on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 12:06 PM EDT |
As soon as Oracle Linux starts to deviate too much from Red Hat, they'll have to
spend a lot of time and effort to apply any fixes Red Hat makes. At some point,
the advantage of starting off from Red Hat wil disappear.
I'm just hoping they won't call it OraLinux. ;-)
---
Intellectual Property is an oxymoron.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: iabervon on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 12:53 PM EDT |
One thing that's worth mentioning is that Oracle has been doing Linux kernel
development for a while now. They wrote OCFS, which is a file system that's just
right for a cluster of Oracle database servers. Of course, the Oracle database
has a very different usage pattern for its storage from anything else, so OCFS
isn't used for anything other than big database servers. They've been cleaning
up the code with the goal of getting it into the mainline kernel, but it hasn't
happened yet.
Red Hat's been shipping OCFS for ages, but nobody uses it for anything other
than Oracle, so Red Hat doesn't really understand it. But it's part of the OS,
not the Oracle database, so Oracle isn't officially the tech support for it. It
just makes sense that Oracle would actually sell the weird Red Hat configuration
that the production database is supposed to have, because they wrote the
interesting code and they understand how it's supposed to work.
On the other hand, Oracle has always had a clear understanding of the difference
between production servers and development machines. You've been able for ages
to just sign up and get a copy of Oracle for free to install on your development
machine, so that you can then develop programs that require an expensive Oracle
production database server license to run for real. I don't think that Oracle
actually intends to try to get into the OS market for desktops, workstations, or
servers that aren't running other Oracle products already, so Red Hat should
still retain practically their whole market. Their press so far hasn't been
clear on this, but if you look at what they seem to be offering, it's
not going to replace the need for a Red Hat license for the rest of the machines
in the company. For that matter, it's pretty common to do your dynamic web site
as JBoss/Tomcat/Weblogic/etc. on Red Hat (which Oracle Linux wouldn't provide
support for) talking to an Oracle database server. These people aren't going to
ditch Red Hat, even if they do adopt Oracle Linux.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 12:58 PM EDT |
A business's reputation has a serious cost impact on its success or failure.
In economics its called 'transaction costs'. Simply put, that is the cost of
the process of acquiring something. That is, the cost of finding a supplier,
establishing a deal, and verifying the performance (yours and the other
parties).
Simple example: You are buying widgets.
Company A has a reputation of supplying a reliable product, delivering on time,
and being scrupulously careful about accurate billing. The industry still talks
about the time their factory manager personally delivered parts to keep a
customer running. As for money, your comptroller trusts their billing
department as much as he does his own accounting.
Company B is different. You have to inspect everything they send you, because
sometimes its clearly production rejects. They have three FTC complaints
pending, and the local courthouse has a whole bank of filing cabinets for just
that company. The industry gossip is that they double bill. Intentionally.
Your comptroller screams at the mention of the name, and the purchasing
department spits.
There are two other cost pools that need to be factored into the transaction
costs: opportunity costs, and monitized risk.
Opportunity cost is the revenue/benefit forgone, by choosing option A vs all
other options. In our example, Company B eats your employee's time and
attention. There are a lot of more productive things they could have been doing
if they hadn't had do 100% inspection, and audit every bill. Not to mention, the
mental frazzle and exaspiration of dealing with rabid hyenas in suits. You
simply can make a lot more money and sleep better if Company A is your
supplier.
Monitized risk is more esoteric, but potentially company killing. Company A is
fanatical about the quality of their product. It always meets spec. Company B
has shipped you scrap and lied about it. What are the chances that your
incoming inspection process will miss a defective part and ship a bad product to
your customers with Company A vs Company B? (Note that every operation has an
error rate, so 100% inspection is actually <100%.) Even if your product is
not life safety related, bad product damages your company's reputation, and
costs money to replace etc. In simple terms the monetary risk of doing business
with Company A is orders of magnitude less than with Company B.
In short, reputation is an extremely efficient predictor of the transaction
costs of doing business with Company A vs Company B. Given the transaction
cost, the item cost from Company B has to be extraordinarily low to offset the
high transaction cost. In the example given, the disparity is so extreme, that
a competent manager simply would not accept the monitized risk.
In bottom line terms, the transaction costs of doing business with Company A are
very low, and Company B very high. To put it another way, you can save a lot of
money by doing business with companies who make a point of being ethical.
JG
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 01:02 PM EDT |
"Cut throat competition destroys software". --PJ
Both Ellison and Shuttleworth with big checkbooks from other businesses can make
certain that their competitors are damaged by low prices (even gratis), while
they can continue to run their businesses as a tax writeoff. Why differentiate
one from the other? Certainly not because one prefers their product, or because
of their "ethics" manifesto. They are the same in principle.
Note that Shuttleworth was in discussions with Ellison before this
announcement.
Either predatory pricing is fair or it is not. But there should not be a double
standard.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 01:04 PM EDT |
Sorry, the joke that just had to be told...
What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?
God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 01:10 PM EDT |
Oracle is (assuming you can believe what they say, which is not altogether
certain*) doing what is best for Oracle. That isn't a bad thing. They are doing
it in the worst possible way, which isn't good.
Instead of Redhat, Oracle should have taken a clean, unpatched kernel and built
around that. Support LINUX, not Redhat. Of course, Larry isn't interested in
working that hard, he'd rather profit from someone else's work.
All the screaming about a fork is meaningless. Redhat IS a fork. How can adding
one more tine to the fork make that big a difference? The big worry for many
appears to be the drop in Redhat stock price. It was overpriced, this just
brings it down to reasonable levels.
*But Oracle likes to buy other companies. They entertained the idea of buying
Redhat, but didn't like the price tag. This is likely an attack on that price
tag. If Oracle can hurt Redhat financially, Larry probably figures he can pick
up the whole company for pennies on the dollar.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Misguiding the misguiding - Authored by: PJ on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 02:08 PM EDT
- CentOS - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 03:44 PM EDT
- CentOS - Authored by: PJ on Sunday, October 29 2006 @ 10:34 PM EST
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 01:21 PM EDT |
RH is in the service business. Well what about all that
neat software they created? It is GPLed. That means that
CentOS or Novell or Ubuntu can copy it into their distro
with no problem. Thank you very much RH. RH's advantage
with their software is that since they created it, they can
probably service it better. Free software is a loss leader
for RH's service business.
Now what is Oracle up to? They can not sell OSFS. Are they
going to compete with RH in the service business? Or they
in the Linux service business to synergize with their
proprietary database business?
What if the customer wants Linux support from Oracle, but
wants to run MySql?
In any case, none of this can hurt the customer.
Competition in a service business just got hotter. Choose
the best deal an go with it. That's capitalism.
I tell investors that want to make money on the Linux
phenomenon to invest in a business that can use Linux
effectively, that is where the money is. RH and Novell are
in a competitive service industry, that is getting more so.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 01:49 PM EDT |
The way I see it this is very similar to what Ubuntu did to Debian. Ubuntu
wanted to create a more user friendly Debian, while synchronizing with Debian
sid every six months. With every release Ubuntu departs more and more from
Debian Sid. Not all of Ubuntu's patches find their way back to Debian - mostly
perhaps 'cos Debian developers view Ubuntu as having screwed them (just as
RedHat views or will view Oracle).
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 03:02 PM EDT |
I love it! What a wonderful, open community response to the Ellison FUD!
Rather than suing them, they turn Larry's words a bit and come up with a
stupendous new name/slogan.
If the RedHat Marketing folks don't put up a billboard down the road from the
Oracle ones, they are really missing the boat. First you'd drive past
Unbreakable, then you'd quickly see Unfakeable. GUYS & GALS, YA GOTTA MOVE
ON THIS ONE!
Fantastic, and will put a smile on your face for the rest of the day. The open
community does it again! Touche, Larry![ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 04:23 PM EDT |
"There does appear to be some kind of enterprise makeover attempt, to
remake Linux in their image."
Groklaw's desire to woo the movers and shakers of industry, and to morph away
from the geeks who were instrumental in getting it going, is just the same as
the actions of big business. However Linux has an existence of its own, and will
not be controlled by the chattering classes.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 05:17 PM EDT |
Don't feel to sorry for Red Hat this is the price of selling a linux distro.
Just remember it's 95% of Red Hat's distro is written by people who don't work
for Red Hat. All Red Hat does is it package it up, testing, and provide
support. Also remember that Red Hat did this to sls*.
Or was it slackware did it to sls. Then red hat to slackware. It's all kind
of hazy. (I was using slackware until about Red Hat 4.0)[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 05:21 PM EDT |
Other people have pointed out specific instances already, but I feel strongly
enough about this to chime in myself: Red Hat is not Linux any more than Oracle
is. Red Hat is just another distro, put together by a corporation with its own
agenda. Red Hat as been, generally speaking, a good citizen over the years --
they give a lot back, and support a lot of good work. But they've also done
thier share of grandstanding, boneheaded moves, deciding to do things
"their way", resting on their laurels, and trading on the public
perception that they *are* "Linux".
Back when I was getting into Linux, MCC was already history, Yggdrasil was
fading, Slackware was the new hotness, and Red Hat was this weirdo commercial
distro that no one I knew cared for. (And, as an aside, something quirky called
"Debian" had just been released.)
The point is that Red Hat is just another distro, and that conflating them with
"Linux" or portraying them as inherently more virtuous than Oracle
does a service to no one but Red Hat.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: jimwelch on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 05:51 PM EDT |
Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery(EOP) vs Kirk of the Hills Presbyterian
Church
Summary: Kirk wants to leave the denomination PC(USA) for
another EPC (Evangelical Presbyterian Church). EOP says they own the property,
even though 96% of the congregation voted to leave!
The Pastor's point of
view: Tom Gray's
Blog
The official website: PC(USA)
This may effect as many as 100
churches who want to leave PC(USA)! ---
Never to trust a man who wears
a suit and tie! [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 06:09 PM EDT |
Great Bridge formed in 2000 to support PostgreSQL, and hired three of the
core developers.
Red Hat came out with support for postgreSQL that
pretty much kicked the chair legs out from Great Bridge, and although Bruce is
cordial about it in this
interview, it's clear that Red Hat was not very sporting about it. Great
Bridge went under, probably didn't get enough traction before Red Hat undercut
their support prices.
So, um, again, pot, kettle, black... [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 06:10 PM EDT |
| Since when has Oracle been interested in saving IT departments money? See this
article by linspire
click
here [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 07:55 PM EDT |
"Making Linux more successful in the enterprise is the right goal. But not
if you kill off what makes Linux desirable, namely ethics." What exactly is
unethical about taking Red Hat striping out the trademark (note it's Red Hat who
forces this), making a few modifications, and selling and offering support.
This is open source software. Very little of it was written by Red Hat, and
they chose to release their code under the GPL.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: eamacnaghten on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 08:03 PM EDT |
| I am just back from the LinuxWorld UK where I was covering the event for
FreeSoftwareMagazine.com (article probably out in a few days - plug alert! :-)
), and on Wednesday (before all this broke) I talked to an Oracle rep regarding
the (then) possibility of an Oracle distribution.
After a few "No Comments"
and "Cannot answer that" he opened up a bit. What he said was that the reason
Oracle liked Linux was because of it's openness. With closed OS's they have a
support problem, when the system goes wrong due to the OS as far as the customer
is concerned it is still Oracle's problem - them being the primary vendor.
With closed OS's this is a problem for them, they are stuck a bit between
the ship and the shore owning the problem but being relatively powerless to fix
it. With Linux they have the ability to examine the source, work out what is
wrong, and maybe even fix it themselves.
In short - they say Linux improves
"supportability" (his word, not mine).
The attraction to producing their
own distribution is that they can take that "supportability" one step further
and have complete control as to how the database, operating system and hardware
interact.
The Larry Ellison's comments regarding RHEL, both now and the
passed months, seem to be more about sour grapes over losing JBoss to RedHat
rather than being any meaningful technological advancement. He seems to have
got a couple of haardware manufacturers to tag a long probably with the hope of
getting some business via Ellison. Ah well, maybe he will get over it and we can
all move on at some point....
Web Sig Eddy Currents [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: ssavitzky on Thursday, October 26 2006 @ 09:46 PM EDT |
I wrote about this in
my blog this afternoon -- my conclusion was that Oracle's real competitive
target is Microsoft, not RedHat.
Oracle's goal here is to offer the
same kind of "one-stop shopping" that enterprise customers can get from
Microsoft with their SQL Server -- all the software from one vendor. The
advantage for the customer -- and it's a huge one -- is that there's no
fingerpointing.
An interesting side-effect is Oracle's $99 price
point for a year's worth of minimum support. If RedHat goes back to selling
boxed sets at retail for $99, it's likely that they will gain from
this change, not lose. ---
Never anger a bard, for your name sounds
funny and scans to Greensleeves. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, October 27 2006 @ 03:21 PM EDT |
Oracle is becoming the parasite to OSS. First they cornered MySQL with their
InnoDB and Sleepycat acquisitions, now they pull this? If this is Oracle's way
to develop a good relationship the OSS community then I hope no one else starts
to "embrace" OSS in a similar way.
As a side note, I am glad to see that someone is finally starting to take note
about the core ethical issues involved in this announcement.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, October 29 2006 @ 09:13 PM EST |
We all know the names of plenty of Red Hat FOSS hackers in many areas of FOSS.
Anyone knows any Oracle hackers out there?[ Reply to This | # ]
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