Wow! Oracle just declared war on Red Hat

[greggh]

Oracle just announced that they will offer full support at half the price for customers running Red Hat. Red Hat shares are down 25% on the news, that's about 3/4 of billion $ in marketcap lost today. I guess Ellison is really pissed at Red Hat for buying Jboss and trying to compete with them.

Red Hat shares rocked
http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/newsanalysis/techsoftware/10317676.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announced the new program at his company's OpenWorld convention here, which has drawn a record 42,000 attendees.

As of Wednesday, Oracle will offer full support to Red Hat customers, at a price that Ellison claimed is roughly 50% lower. He said the inability of Red Hat and other Linux vendors to offer the kind of support needed by large businesses was holding back the progress of the open source operating system. "The lack of enterprise quality support has slowed the adoption of Linux," Ellison said. "This isn't about Red Hat, this is about increasing the adoption of Linux."

Ellison's announcement was something of a surprise. There has been speculation for months that Oracle would compete head to head with Red Hat by offering its own version of Linux. But that would have opened the company to charges that it was splintering Linux for its own selfish ends. Competing with Red Hat by offering support, though, is a much cleaner solution.

"I don't think this will kill Red Hat," Ellison said in response to a question from the audience. "This is capitalism. We are competing," he said.

Oracle, he said, will do a better job fixing bugs than Red Hat, indemnify customers against potential intellectual property issues, and offer better customer support for less money.

A spokesman for Red Hat could not be reached for comment.

[deweese]

wow!

what part of Brooklyn?

The new Zod fedora core 6 distro has a newer kernel than Edgy.
It has 2.6.18!

[greggh]

what part of Brooklyn?

Flatlands area

[deweese]

I am in Windsor Terrace.

[mozetti]

Ellison is downplaying it, but from a strictly-business point of view* this is a pretty big attack. This is major. What other source of revenue does Red Hat have if you take away the service?

*Meaning, there are IT reasons also, but I don't think they are central to this action.

[ComplexNumber]

Ellison is downplaying it, but from a strictly-business point of view* this is a pretty big attack. This is major. What other source of revenue does Red Hat have if you take away the service?

*Meaning, there are IT reasons also, but I don't think they are central to this action.
maybe redhat will have to think of something else that will differentiate them and make their offering more attractive to the buyer. maybe an additional service, or maybe they will branch out into another area just as redhat went from the desktop to the enterprise after redhat 9.

[greggh]

RHAT now down almost 30%. Red Hat may lose over $1 bil in market cap before the day is through. I guess it's best not to **** off Ellison!

[DoctorMO]

Red Hat will go on, this is open source in action it allows anyone to offer the support required by big business and as long as orical play by the rules and give back to the community the result will be even more developers working on fixing linux bugs.

[greggh]

Red Hat will go on, this is open source in action it allows anyone to offer the support required by big business and as long as orical play by the rules and give back to the community the result will be even more developers working on fixing linux bugs.

There is more to it than that here. I think this is Ellison angry at Red Hat and trying to hurt them. He'd be willing to lose money on support just to hurt them.

[commodore]

It would be very bad if Oracle would beat Red Hat because Oracle doesn't care about open source. Oracle is here for the money.

[mips]

Red Hat responds - http://www.redhat.com/promo/unfakeable/

[ComplexNumber]

It would be very bad if Oracle would beat Red Hat because Oracle doesn't care about open source. Oracle is here for the money.
so is redhat and all the others who are in business. don't kid yourself that money doesn't come first and foremost.

[mips]

It would be very bad if Oracle would beat Red Hat because Oracle doesn't care about open source. Oracle is here for the money.

And Red hat I suppose is doing it for fun ? It's called business & business is about making profits for your share holders.

[greggh]

Red Hat responds - http://www.redhat.com/promo/unfakeable/

From that page...



Red Hat & Oracle Partnership

Q: Does Oracle's recent announcement change Red Hat's partnership with Oracle?

A: No. Red Hat has had a productive 7-year relationship with Oracle. Red Hat will continue to work closely with Oracle to optimize Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss middleware subscriptions for Oracle products, and to support joint customers.



-- and then just to prove what a great partnership Red Hat and Oracle will continue to have, Red Hat calls Oracle liars 4 times...



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.



Software Compatibility

Q: Oracle says their Linux support includes the same software compatibility and ISV certifications of 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 software testing and certification process, and may cause unexpected behavior. Hence Red Hat software certifications are invalidated.



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.



Security

Q: Can Oracle produce timely security updates to Red Hat Enterprise Linux as they stated?

A: No. There will be a delay between the time a Red Hat Enterprise Linux update is issued, and the time the source code makes its way to Oracle. And there is no guarantee that the source code for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux update will work correctly when integrated into Oracle's Linux code base; this integration and test may take additional time. In the case where the update corrects critical security flaws, Oracle customers may be exposed to additional risk.

[deweese]

I am on red hat's side.

[ComplexNumber]

i'm on red hats's side too. very much so. it my well work out in red hats favour in about a year or so once customers have had a chance to compare the quality and substance of what red hat has to offer compared to what oracle has to offer. red hat is the original in what it offers and is the real mccoy. comparing red hat's offereing with oracle is bit like comparing fender with squier. the latter is a cheap lower quality branch of the former.
the recent crashing of red hat's shares is just a blip.

also, i don't like larry whats-his-name either.

[maniacmusician]

yes, this was a pretty sh*t move by Oracle. I havn't used RHEL (and i've heard it's not that great either), but I wonder if this move by Oracle won't generate bad PR? It seems kind of sleazy to me, and I imagine to anyone familiar with open source.

[darkhatter]

When the heck did all this happened:confused: :confused: :confused:
I'm so lost

[RAV TUX]

Has anybody here tried Oracle's Unbreakable Linux?

I went to the download page and it was down....

Since this is technically about two different distros

1. RedHat
2. Oracle Unbreakable Linux

I will move this thread to the Other OS forum...

[BWF89]

A free market for support is always a good thing. Now that RedHat support will be 50% cheaper more people will adopt RedHat instead of Microsoft Windows.

"The great thing about free software is that there is a free market for support. The problem with proprietary software is that your stuck with 1 company that's allowed to offer you support. So no wonder the support is so bad"
-Richard Stallman, Revolution OS (rough quote)

[Spano]

I wonder if Microsoft could go into the discount open source support business.

[kuja]

A free market for support is always a good thing. Now that RedHat support will be 50% cheaper more people will adopt RedHat instead of Microsoft Windows.

50% cheaper? If that's the case then I certainly agree, that should bring the total cost of ownership far below that of the windows equivalent.

[qamelian]

Has anybody here tried Oracle's Unbreakable Linux?

I haven't tried it but there is a review on the Linux Format Magazine website at http://www.linuxformat.co.uk . Sorry I don't have a direct link but the site seems to be down right now.

From what I remember of the review. So far Oracle hasn't done anything so far but replace Red Hat's graphics and logos with their own. Everything else seems to be standard RHEL 4.

[marianom]

For the moment it seems to be the same as CentOS (great distro by the way).

Let see what happens in the future.. if Oracle adds something there in their version or offers discounts on database related soft it will get hard (I don't think this will happen).
I think the database and what it has inside is far more important than the distro, sure most coporations had paid more to oracle than to redhat.

[gnomeuser]

Red Hat retaliates:

http://www.redhat.com/promo/unfakeable/

[RAV TUX]

It is a great publicity stunt for both RedHat and Oracle....they planned this together very well.

[skull_leader]

I wonder if Microsoft could go into the discount open source support business.

Good observation. That's kinda scary...

[ihavenoname]

It is a great publicity stunt for both RedHat and Oracle....they planned this together very well.
Where did you get that? It seems to me like RH is pissed. Also I heard that Oracle was mad at RH because it out did them in a bid to buy JBoss. Several ppl have the idea that Oracle wanted RH's stock to plummet so that they could buy them out cheaper. This would royaly suck for people using Fedora, CentOS or the like. I don't think Oracle would continue supporting FC. And I don't think they will be releasing source Code as quickly either. Just when I thought Fedora of all distros had the most "stable" Future.

[deweese]

Right now I am downloading Fedora core 6. I've already tried the live cd.
It's an awesome gnome desktop. I also found nice gnome wallpaper from
the fedora site.

Oracle: Don't Mess With The Hat!