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Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

linux.oracle.com

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Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#81

Post by ChuckMcM »

jpalomaki wrote: post #40
jasonlingx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still no good answer... why is Oracle doing this? I don't see how this story doesn't end with a whole bunch of people having to convert back to CentOS when someone at Oracle questions the value in offering this distribution for free.

I could imagine Oracle's long term goal would be to replace Red Hat's role as The Linux Distribution for commercial stuff. One way to do this would be to start this way. Without giving their stuff for free, they would never gain significant share of the total market.

This.

I've tried to analyze this a dozen ways and so far the only one that makes sense is that Oracle has decided to kill RedHat. They want a billion dollar OS business and RedHat has that, but they can't just buy RedHat because with Linux the guys just quit and set up service as 'BlueHat' and continue on their merry way and the customers follow them.

So. The only way to kill RedHat is to take all of their customers. Since RedHat has a GPL'd product Oracle has just as much right to give it away as RedHat does. They try to convert 'free' customers to 'support' customers when a problem comes up.

If they are successful, people migrate to their version of Linux, RedHat dies, Oracle gets the support business because they are not dependent on Linux support revenues to survive. "Poof" Oracle 'owns' a billion dollar OS business. Their investment in getting it is probably less than a 'normal' buyout price if RedHat was a commercial software company.

Of course if they don't convert customers fast enough I'm sure Larry will grow tired of this ploy and flush it down the toilet. At which point people on Oracle Linux will be either sudden new RHEL customers or back to CentOS/SL.

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#82

Post by pgeorgi »

wdaher wrote: post #57
ominous_prime wrote: post #30

I'm not in the least a fan of Oracle, but I think this could still be a safe move for a free EL distribution. It don't see a major drawback here: - You get faster and more reliable updates, especially important for security updates. - The release schedule will be more predictable (I know a lot of people moved to ScientificLinux while waiting for the CentOS6 release) - It's binary compatible with RHEL (and therefor Ce…

I think that's an accurate summary. And I think the point that you can always switch back to CentOS or Scientific Linux is an important one. Ultimately, this is a topic where a lot of people have religious devotion, so for me it's really a question of whether pragmatism outweighs zealotry.

So there are migrate-away scripts, too?

I suppose they wouldn't be very hard to do (essentially drop Oracle specific packages, and point yum to the original repos).

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#83

Post by runjake »

wdaher wrote: post #73
vtanase wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact same feeling that I'm getting from this announcement. To me this just feels like a publicity stunt, where Oracle is aiming to get a slice of the CentOS/RHEL market with very little investment. As far as I'm concerned this isn't even a valid attempt on their behalf to earn the trust of the Open Source Community. Taking something that already works and touting your own horn about how you can provide f…

I was trying to go for a "for linux nerds, by linux nerds" vibe, so I'm amused that your complaint is "This doesn't sound corporate enough". At the end of the day, my view here is that Oracle has actually produced something useful, but lots of people are blind to it, in no small part because of what ultimately boils down to zealotry (which doesn't seem like an awesome reason to me). Hence the point of trying to get t…

I think you did a good job with the vibe, although it was somewhat odd-feeling coming from an oracle.com site.

It did make me double-check the URL bar with the "If you find yourself needing to buy support, have fun reinstalling your system with RHEL before anyone will talk to you". But is perfectly valid.

The problem with Oracle Linux is that it's from Oracle. And I just don't trust them at all. I know I can revert back to CentOS or SL or whatever, but that's a pain. Trust is the problem.

You have a steep hill to hike, but it sounds like you may be cut out to take that on.

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#84

Post by wdaher »

andrewcooke wrote: post #76
wdaher wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that Red Hat still can't get some people to move off RHEL 3, I'm amused that you think this could actually kill CentOS :) And in the unlikely event that it were to happen, you could just switch to Scientific Linux, or whatever new RHEL clone would crop up in the wake of the news.

or we could stick with the guys who have given us centos. i am not sure why your compassion is so selective. people who work for fucking oracle are misunderstood saints, while the poor sods that put centos together - who have never done anyone any harm - should be thrown to the wolves.

I don't think I've ever espoused that opinion! I like CentOS a lot. I had a beer with Karanbir in London in 2009, and I'm totally impressed that they're able to put out an incredibly popular Linux distribution with next to nothing, resource-wise.

But if I were a sysadmin, would I run CentOS in production? Is CentOS perfect? I'd say no on both counts, and I think there's nothing wrong with saying "There's room for improvement, and we think we've done better."

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#85

Post by mseebach »

SwellJoe wrote: post #26

I'm pleased to see that evil deeds have consequences, though I'd like to see Oracle suffer a little (OK, a lot) more before getting over the hump. People don't use Oracle Linux because the Open Source community doesn't trust Oracle (and they shouldn't; that mistrust has been well-earned over a couple of decades). There's a lot of reasons not to use Oracle Linux, most of them non-technical. Oracle is simply not an eth…

If you run CentOS, it's probably because you're running something that wants to run on RHEL and isn't re-compilable for another platform because it isn't free software. Such as, say, Oracle.

CentOS has for years been the go-to for running Oracle without paying anyone for the OS (RedHat EL or Windows). Now that Oracle has it's own Linux, it makes perfect sense for them to provide a free path into that offering.

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#86

Post by wdaher »

dr_faustus wrote: post #7

Oh yeah! Please lock me in to your crappy Red Hat knock-off so you can screw me royally if Larry changes his mind and wants to extract some money from its users. IMHO, Oracle is certainly the LAST company you should use any product from unless you are absolutlely forced to (like Java, unfortunately, or their bloated DB if your are in the financial industry). Once you are dependent on them, no matter if you are a part…

FWIW, I think if you actually talked to any of our legacy Ksplice customers and asked them if the Ksplice experience has changed for them after the Oracle acquisition, the answer would be "no".

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#87

Post by mmmooo »

sciurus wrote: post #33

The advantage of Oracle Linux that I see is the newer supported kernel version, On both Oracle Linux 5 and 6 you get 3.0, compared to 2.6.18 for RHEL5 and 2.6.32 for RHEL6.

Are you sure about this? the public repo seems to show 2.6.18/2.6.32.. This would actually be a dis-advantage in many cases, as a number of vendor utils (I'm looking at you HP) don't play nice w/ 3.x kernels.

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#88

Post by pgeorgi »

wdaher wrote: post #73
vtanase wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact same feeling that I'm getting from this announcement. To me this just feels like a publicity stunt, where Oracle is aiming to get a slice of the CentOS/RHEL market with very little investment. As far as I'm concerned this isn't even a valid attempt on their behalf to earn the trust of the Open Source Community. Taking something that already works and touting your own horn about how you can provide f…

I was trying to go for a "for linux nerds, by linux nerds" vibe, so I'm amused that your complaint is "This doesn't sound corporate enough". At the end of the day, my view here is that Oracle has actually produced something useful, but lots of people are blind to it, in no small part because of what ultimately boils down to zealotry (which doesn't seem like an awesome reason to me). Hence the point of trying to get t…

Not zealotry: bad experience.

Your plug for faster updates, for example: Security updates for Solaris used to be free.

So while I know that Oracle is large enough to host many different philosophies in many different departments, what Oracle has done to the former Sun departments really makes me wary of trusting any free offers by Oracle.

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#89

Post by SwellJoe »

wdaher wrote: post #73
vtanase wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact same feeling that I'm getting from this announcement. To me this just feels like a publicity stunt, where Oracle is aiming to get a slice of the CentOS/RHEL market with very little investment. As far as I'm concerned this isn't even a valid attempt on their behalf to earn the trust of the Open Source Community. Taking something that already works and touting your own horn about how you can provide f…

I was trying to go for a "for linux nerds, by linux nerds" vibe, so I'm amused that your complaint is "This doesn't sound corporate enough". At the end of the day, my view here is that Oracle has actually produced something useful, but lots of people are blind to it, in no small part because of what ultimately boils down to zealotry (which doesn't seem like an awesome reason to me). Hence the point of trying to get t…

I assume you're on the Oracle Linux team? I'm sure you're sincere, and I'm sure the Oracle Linux team has many good folks working on it (likewise, the rest of Oracle). But, when you work within the belly of a beast, an absolute horror show of historic and ongoing wrongdoing, you have to expect pushback and mistrust from the Open Source community.

Oracle is a corporate sociopath. If you wish to label me a zealot for expecting ethics from the people and companies I work with, that's fine. But, it's not going to alter the reality that I am not alone. Many people mistrust Oracle, and just because one unit within Oracle seems to be trying to do right, it doesn't alter the fundamental nature of that creature. It'd be easier to overlook past misdeeds if Oracle was not currently behaving in unethical ways on a massive scale, and attacking Open Source on several fronts.

Oracle cannot have it both ways. It cannot wage war against Open Source and software freedom, and expect the Open Source community to just look the other way and choose Oracle products. At least, I sure as hell won't be looking the other way.

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#90

Post by acdha »

skittles wrote: post #35
jasonlingx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still no good answer... why is Oracle doing this? I don't see how this story doesn't end with a whole bunch of people having to convert back to CentOS when someone at Oracle questions the value in offering this distribution for free.

If you switch to Oracle Linux and if you have some major problem you can't fix, then the next logical step is to pay for support. It would be a simple step to take since you're already running the official version.

Particularly because this is a weak point for Red Hat: they've even orphaned paying customers in the past and there's currently no supported migration path for CentOS. If you're using CentOS or Scientific and decide you want support, there's significant value to being able to pay for support without being told to do a bare-metal reinstall of everything first.
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