- cross-posted to:
- foss@beehaw.org
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- foss@beehaw.org
- linux@lemmy.ml
Oracle responds to Red Hat
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Even ORACLE is calling out Red Hat.
Who’s next, Apple?
Currently testing Debian in a VM, I have lots of files so I need to set everything straight before I switch.
I suppose Apple uses Linux in some of their servers, so maybe. But their desktop product is Darwin so I don’t think that’s getting any votes
Their desktop product is a stolen BSD.
Indeed, but with that kind of licensing there’s nothing stopping them. We already found limitations of GPL with RedHat, I think all of these licenses need an overhaul
By the way, if you are a Linux developer who disagrees with IBM’s actions and you believe in Linux freedom the way we do, we are hiring.
🤨
From a practical standpoint, we believe Oracle Linux will remain as compatible as it has always been through release 9.2, but after that, there may be a greater chance for a compatibility issue to arise. If an incompatibility does affect a customer or ISV, Oracle will work to remediate the problem.
This is the part of the post I find most interesting. Looks like Oracle won’t be engaging in whatever workarounds Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux are using to continue operating as downstream distros of RHEL. Instead, if I’m reading this correctly it means Oracle Linux will essentially be forking from RHEL past 9.2. There were essentially three options before Oracle when Red Hat made their license change:
- Pay Red Hat for RHEL licenses. Lol as if, Larry Ellison didn’t become a billionaire by spending money he didn’t need to.
- Use whatever workarounds to remain a downstream distro and pay Red Hat nothing, while using their army of lawyers to fend off any ensuing lawsuits from Red Hat / IBM. It’s not like they couldn’t afford to fight the case after all.
- Fork from Red Hat.
That they’ve chosen the third options is kind of fascinating to me, and to understand why you’d probably need to understand how enterprise database support works. The Oracle databases I see day to day are massive, and they drive practically all of a company’s core operations. Unanticipated downtime is fucking expensive, so these companies are willing to pay a lot for top-tier support (not like I think Oracle Support is actually good, mind you, but that’s a whole other topic). The DBAs running these databases don’t want to deal with any headaches whatsoever, so they’re only going to install Oracle on approved operating systems. They can’t afford to have Oracle say “nope, sorry, unsupported platform” during an outage.
For a couple decades now, the supported Linux platforms for Oracle Database have been RHEL, SLES and Oracle Linux. Obviously Oracle Linux will remain on that list, and I doubt SLES is going anywhere either (it tends to be popular in Europe), but does RHEL drop off the list in future? Does Oracle think they can actually convert RHEL installs to Oracle Linux installs at customer sites? Or does RHEL stay on the list but become the red-headed step-child? Either way, this feels like an attempt by Oracle to erode the value of Red Hat’s platform. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.
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I was actually kind of hoping for the second option, if only so that it would be Oracle footing the legal bill to establish a precedent. That Oracle didn’t choose this option may indicate that Red Hat’s coercive license wrapper (“if you exercise your open source rights to redistribute, we’ll close your account”) is actually an effective and legal end-run around open source licenses. I don’t want that to be the case.
Yeah the historical precedents were all Oracle giving Red Hat the finger and Red Hat going “sure, we won’t go after you” because… well… would you wanna get into a lawsuit war with Oracle? They look at the legal system as a revenue stream.
I totally wouldn’t/do not expect an Oracle fork. I expected they’d just continue on as always. That’s probably also bad news for Red Hat tbh.
Cheering for Oracle is certainly an unexpected turn of events, but here we are. They are absolutely right that
RedHatIBM’s motivations are simply to kill competition and obtain vendor lock-in by ending RHEL compatibility. RedHat is truly dead.Cheering for Oracle is certainly an unexpected turn of events, but here we are.
Oracle is literally freeloading RHEL without giving anything back. If they were an active Fedora and CentOS contributor, I would have sympathy but they are not.
RedHat is truly dead.
Red Hat is (at the moment at least) still the biggest FOSS supporter around. Oracle’s behavior makes clear that they have absolutely no interest in picking up contributions in upstream FOSS community projects.
lol “competition”. Oracle doesn’t contribute 1/10th that Red Hat does to open source. This whole controversy is BECAUSE of Oracle copying Red Hat’s homework with OEL. Now they are pissed because they can’t have a free lunch anymore at Red Hat’s expense.
We live in a weird reality lol
Learn to never trust a corporation, no matter how “good” they are. Corporations exist for profit only, that is the only reason why they exist and function.
I’ll never use an Oracle product and IBM is a soulless corporation. Debian is a much better product anyway but they’re missing some of the really good enterprise features that Red Hat has. I hope at some point they have solutions for Satellite and IDM.
Sure, corporations gonna corporate, capitalism sucks…
But I felt this article was written in a sincere spirit to keep Linux open and multiparty. There are obviously many more reasons for such a sentiment than just the natural urge to undress and smoke up (I know, puzzles me too). However in these times of often direct aggression to anything I know and love I welcomed it a sight for sour eyes.
