Oracle Enterprise Linux - Make your bets

[Ivan Ferreira]

What do you think about the release of Oracle Enterprise Linux for free (no cost)?

How it will affect to distributions like Red Hat or Suse? (according to your oppinion)

[Ivan Krastev]

I think its a good idea and will be like an addition for Applicattion/Web server running RedHat (or Suse).
Everything depends from provided support - this is the basic reason for existing of commersial Linux distributions. If distro is officially supported from Oracle and undet GPL this will be great.

regards,
ivan

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

I am long unhappy with Oracle's licensing, support and bruiser type attempts to collect money. I also think RH's license/support requirement is a violation of GNU.

I am likely to continue to use centos where I have the choice and legacy concerns make a move to Suse difficult.

SEP

[Ragu_3]

OEL will be another milestone in the progress of free software towards acceptance of free/GNU software by mainstream businesses, which have now understood the importance of freedom. The prescence of Oracle will give a boost to further development of free software despite low competitive cost.

RedHat and SuSE will do better and excel, they will innovate more and do good too.

Oracle vouching for its "Linux" offering by way of indemnification shows its commitment to support.

[Huc_1]

Well good news, a move in the right direction !

As for Red Hat and Suse they get their money from support and I do bot think this will affect them much ... no in the big account's erea, but for smaller shops this will help along distributions like Centos.

Also good support is not so ease to find, and who best then Oracles if you have a real big problem.. and can afford to pay ?

This also means that some with less money to spend will now be inclined to use Oracle instead of "free" competition "MySQL,PostgreSQL, DB2" and the more ground oracle cover where the profit are marginal, the better.

Only my 2 cent worth rumbling !

enjoy life.

Jean-Pierre Huc

[Alpha977]

Hello!

I think is a good idea.

i have used to learn to my collegues how is a database, how install to linux Red Hat and create an application server with OC4J.

[Eric Singer]

We'll more than likely go with Oracle Enterprise Linux on our nodes that are 100% Oracle (RAC nodes) after our Redhat licensing/support is up for renewal within the next two years. I don't see us changing other servers from Redhat.

Redhat will definitely lose some revenue from this move. My big question is if Oracle is going to add to the Open Source community or is it going to leech off other peoples work?

When it's all said and done, I think Linux will be strenghened by this.

[Ivan Ferreira]

>>>> My big question is if Oracle is going to add to the Open Source community or is it going to leech off other peoples work?


This is a very good point. I assume that improvements will be added by oracle as was done in the RHEL kernel. But let's see...

[Alpha977]

Some years ago, Oracle made the "DB Machine", was a Unix-like product with a Oracle db installed at same time.

This product was completly unsuccessful, and they remove immediatly.

Now they are trying again but now with a Linux platform.
Checkpoint is making a new firewall product with a customized Red Hat platform.

But i don't mind they going over the Open Source community.
I don't mind how money Microsoft give to Oracle for some advice for develop SQL Server 2005.

Oracle is more near Linux now (most of Oracle book using Linux platform example) but most far from Open Source.

This is only my opinion.

Bye!

[George Liu_4]

I think Oracle unbreakable Linux is more appropriate a CentOS clone. It will eat up portion of RH market, which was reflected by the stock market already. I don't know what you means for free as I saw it still wants service or support fee but half the RH price.

If it is real free like debian and CentOS, I'll try it.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

A close look at Oracle Enterprise Linux is that it IS a Centos clone. The size of the iso images are almost exactly the same, the difference is probably due to the fact that the graphics they stick in the release are not the same size as what they replace.

Centos is a wonderful distribution, I use it interchangably with RH ES 4. As to why I'd go Oracle versus supporting the Centos community, I can't think of a single reason.

Larry Ellison is suddenly complaining that Red Hat doesn't release bug fixes fast enough for Oracle. Though this is BS, lets say Oracle starts releasing bug fixes on its own.

If it to maintain binary compatability with RedHat, every time three is a major Red Hat Release, Oracle is going to have to build their fixes from the last release into the new one and re-release.

The average RedHat or CentOS user can do this just as fast by installing errata after the major release hits the market.

RedHat has found some very creative ways to violate GNU and charge for the operating system. They call it support, but lets be honest about it. The license agreement requires you have support if you use the software. Do you really think I need support for a personal copy of RedHat? RHCE baby, not. But if I use a copy of RedHat without support I'm violating the license agreement and if I buy support I'm not using it so I'm really paying for software.

The above is why I use CentOS when I have a choice. yum is easier than RHN anyway and I'm not in to paying for GNU software.

So think about Oracle. Who sell the unlimiteduser license to their database for $40,000 per CPU and have declared publically that each Core on a dual Core or quad Core CPU is a CPU for license purposes.

That means by the way that your two chip quad core server that is dancing around in your head will cost you 10,000 for hardware and $320,000 for Oracle licensing.

Do you really think if I have a choice I'm going to start buying repackaged Linux from a company like that?

This play is simple. Oracle is retaliating for RedHat purchasing a company they wanted to buy. The intent is to harm RedHat's business until they cry uncle and give up the goods.

My plan for the few systems I own is to go CentOS. I'm going to get it a few weeks after RedHat Releases, I get the bug fixes and if I stay with the official repo's I get 100% binary compatability and I'm not even forced to donate to centos.org every year.

SEP
RHCE