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Following my recent article in which I wrote that neither I, nor several financial analysis firms, were aware of any companies that were planning to deploy Oracles Unbreakable Linux, a handful of companies have told me that they are giving Unbreakable Linux a try.
What I think is interesting is why theyre giving it a try, and what it tells us about Oracles intentions toward Red Hat.
First, none of these companies were willing to go on the record with their names. Why? They didnt want their names used because none of them wanted to get into trouble with Oracle.
And, since all but one were Oracle customers, its easy to see why they wouldnt want to get on Larry Ellisons bad side.
The reason that most of them are trying Unbreakable Linux is that Oracle was offering an additional 50 percent discount—on top of the original 50 percent discount to RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) customers—to users who subscribed to the new operating system by Jan. 28.
At this price, as several of the customers said, theres no way that Oracle will break even on Unbreakable Linux sales. Oracle was also keeping this double-discount hush-hush. Not all customers or analysts knew that Oracle was being this aggressive with pricing.