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The tremors from Oracles recent decision to support its own version of Red Hat Linux less expensively than Red Hat does are still being felt in the Linux community.
Red Hats official statement is, “The opportunity for open source just got bigger. Oracles announcement further validates Red Hats technical leadership. We will continue to optimize Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Oracle and compete on value and innovation.”
On Red Hats site, though, the Linux company comes out swinging. In a section titled “Unfakeable Linux,” Red Hat points out a laundry list of whats wrong with Oracles Unbreakable Linux. This includes no support for the Red Hat Application Stack; no guarantees of hardware or software compatibility; and, invoking that swear word in Linux circles, Oracle will “fork” the RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) code.
Does Red Hat have reason to take this so seriously? After seeing its stock get slammed by almost 24 percent in the first full day since Oracles announcement, its easy to see why the company is already making a fight out of it.
On the other hand, Kevin Carmony, Linspires CEO, thinks the market is overreacting to Oracles move. After all, Carmony said, “since when has Oracle been interested in saving IT departments money? Since when has Oracle been known for offering quality support? This news is a bit like Hersheys saying they are going into the health food business. Buyer beware.”