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[Discuss] Oracle Linux, going after CentOs



On 07/24/2012 01:16 PM, Mark Woodward wrote:
> On 07/24/2012 11:46 AM, Richard Pieri wrote:
>> On 7/24/2012 10:08 AM, Matthew Gillen wrote:
>>> They're not really building their own distro.  They are doing what
>>> CentOS does, namely distributing a rebranded RHEL.
>>
>> Oracle is selling support for a rebranded RHEL.
>>
>> Everything Oracle does has one purpose: to generate revenue for
>> Oracle.  Larry Ellison couldn't care less about CentOS shops because
>> they're not going to pay Oracle or Red Hat or Novell anything anyway.
>>
>> The real target is Red Hat shops that use CentOS for systems that
>> don't require service contracts.
> I don't think it is just that, no way. The target is RedHat all the
> way. Like you said, CentOS customers are not buying support, period.
> The objective is to keep people from getting RedHat in the first
> place. So, they get a supported equivalent of RedHat for free. RedHat
> will have to change their model. For the longest time there was a wink
> and a nod to CentOS being the "Free Version" of RHEL. With Oracle,
> they are proposing the support proposition of RHEL, but with no
> initial acquisition cost.
>
> You are a startup. You use CentOS for dev and shoe string
> bootstrapping. You start getting a little more serious, you upgrade to
> RHET on the next cycle, which is what you planned. Instead, however,
> Oracle says "start with us, its free, *and* you can buy support
> later." This is RedHat's old business model, before "raw hide" which
> morphed into Fedora.
>
> Personally, I *HATE* with a passion Larry and Oracle, but I always
> felt betrayed when RedHat changed their business model after RedHat
> 5.0. Here is a situation where RedHat had better adjust or they will
> lose business. This has nothing to do with CentOS except that it will
> be destroyed as a result.
Certainly the ultimate target is RedHat.
BTW: I can get Red Hat Enterprise Linux at no cost to my department for
development purposes, but for production I must buy a retail license.
Businesses must change their business models on a year-to-year basis.
Red Hat has been successful with theirs because they provide a good
product, stability and support. (I've really not been a Red Hat support
customer so I can't comment). Red Hat also does a very good job of
providing things like kernel fixes back to the community. Oracle has no
history of this at all. One possible reason that Oracle is in this
business is that they could build a distro that is optimized for their
database. The two things that are very important technically is large,
fast storage, and excellent memory management. They certainly have the
incentive to provide and optimized Oracle-Linux platform, but I am
dubious about a general Enterprise Linux environment.

So, if I ran a shop and needed to get an enterprise Linux, I would look
at RHEL or SLES long before Oracle, but if we were a bit Oracle shop, we
may want Oracle Linux.
Personally, I would rather fly Larry to his island, and bomb the runway.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id:3BC1EB90 
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