Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS" • Hacker News Board

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#91

Post by khill » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 3:40 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #34

nodata wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know we all like to think that corporations are evil and the presence of corporate interests actually messes stuff up. But Oracle actually is evil . > But this really is one case where you want the oomph of bilion-dollar company making sure that you get your security updates in time. Don't be naive, Oracle wouldn't be doing this if they didn't see a substantial business advantage. > No one else is providing that.…

It's quite possible, that, being a huge company, they do a lot of bad crap (they are not high on my list), but there are some good people there trying to do good things.

That fish rots from the head down.

I've met a lot of smart and friendly developers who work for Oracle (or companies acquired by Oracle) so I know for a fact there are many people in that organization which are genuinely good and really smart.

However, it seems to be a culture which promotes aggressive "shark" type personalities into leadership positions - people who, in my experience, have less focus on ethical business practices and more focus on increasing profits, crushing competition, and advancing up the ladder.

It obviously makes for a successful company but it's a not one which I would trust to have my business' best interests at heart.

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#92

Post by zcvosdfdgj » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 3:41 PM UTC

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #59

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…

I'd be interested in hearing what you are referring to about Ksplice.

ksplice was supported in rhel.. when oracle purchased it, they announced they were going to drop rhel, and then turned it into a 30-day free trial-- after the 30-days, you must switch to oracle linux to continue using ksplice.

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#93

Post by wdaher » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 3:42 PM UTC

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…

By the way, Scientific Linux isn't perfect when it comes to these delays either. I wanted to make a similar graph plotting SL, but laziness prevailed. (I crawled the RHEL, CentOS, and OL mailman archives to get the data, but SL uses listserv.)

It's just one data point, but: Red Hat released RHEL 5.6 on January 13, 2011, but Scientific Linux didn't release SL 5.6 until June 21, 2011

[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/rhelv5-announce/2011-January... [2] http://www.scientificlinux.org/news/sl56

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#94

Post by Spearchucker » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 3:44 PM UTC

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…

Useful it may be, but after more than 10 years of having to work with Oracle products and consultants, the first thing that jumped at me was

...doesn't Oracle Linux cost money? A: Oracle Linux support costs money

That "support" word, right there, is the thing that makes me stay as far from Oracle as I can. It's like "Dude, here's the software. Have it, it's cheap/free." When things go wrong you get stung for exorbitant support/consulting fees, because, hey, you're tied in. With nowhere to go.

Sadly, too many organisations still go by the mantra of "The answer is Oracle. Now, what's the question?". That's no basis for a business case.

And yes, this is a rant, and I do have an axe to grind. I'm sorry if that offends (not my intent).

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#95

Post by obtu » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 3:45 PM UTC

bdunbar wrote: post #79

nodata wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know we all like to think that corporations are evil and the presence of corporate interests actually messes stuff up. But Oracle actually is evil . > But this really is one case where you want the oomph of bilion-dollar company making sure that you get your security updates in time. Don't be naive, Oracle wouldn't be doing this if they didn't see a substantial business advantage. > No one else is providing that.…

But Oracle actually is evil. Evil is stomping a kitten to death. Evil is the gulag, the concentration camp, the cultural revolution. Oracle is just a business.

They tried to make APIs copyrightable. That's about the same magnitude of evil as legalising software patents.

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#96

Post by hammersend » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 3:45 PM UTC

bdunbar wrote: post #79

nodata wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know we all like to think that corporations are evil and the presence of corporate interests actually messes stuff up. But Oracle actually is evil . > But this really is one case where you want the oomph of bilion-dollar company making sure that you get your security updates in time. Don't be naive, Oracle wouldn't be doing this if they didn't see a substantial business advantage. > No one else is providing that.…

But Oracle actually is evil. Evil is stomping a kitten to death. Evil is the gulag, the concentration camp, the cultural revolution. Oracle is just a business.

And the GP was giving his honest opinion. An opinion that is held by many people I've interacted with in the open source community regarding Oracle. Maybe instead of browbeating him over it you could consider encouraging Oracle to pay attention to things like this and do something about recovering their image. BTW, it isn't illegal in any jurisdiction I am aware of to harbor personal feelings towards brands and companies. That's what marketing is all about anyway.

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#97

Post by Nux » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 3:47 PM UTC

LOL! So they took it against RHEL and failed, not they're picking on CentOS (and they will fail). This is just hilarious! Can Oracle get any more pathetic than this?

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#98

Post by davidmr » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 3:47 PM UTC

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'm trying very hard to be as neutral as possible (as opposed to "Oracle bad. Raaaaar!"), but I've been part of the HPC community for a long time, and Oracle has done their best to tell us that we don't matter at all to them (Grid Engine, Lustre, etc.). I understand that the margins on HPC aren't great, so I don't necessarily fault them, but it leaves a very bad taste. That's just one community of many who feel like they've been wronged by Oracle.

You say that they've produced something useful; can you say a little more about what Oracle has specifically produced with respect to Oracle Linux? My strong impression is that they've taken 99.9% Red Hat's hard work, dumped their own 0.1% on top (OCFS2, some IB enhancements, etc.), slapped a big price tag on it and then exclaim, "look what we made!"

Removing that price tag doesn't change much. I'm open to being reasoned with, though, so please tell me why I'm wrong.

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#99

Post by mistermumble » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 3:50 PM UTC

wdaher wrote: post #77

mistermumble wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "guy you're replying to" is Waseem Daher, who was COO and co-founder of KSplice, a startup acquired by Oracle. KSplice provides a mechanism for streaming updates to Linux Kernel and used to support CentOS, Ubuntu and Fedora. After Oracle acquired KSplice, they discontinued support for CentOS while continuing to support the other distros. Oracle also no longer makes available the formerly GPLed code of KSplice. lx…

About half of this is accurate. We didn't discontinue support for CentOS; our legacy customers can continue to get access to Ksplice for all the distros we used to support. We did stop accepting new customers for anything other than Oracle Linux, though. The same source code that Ksplice made available at http://ksplice.com/software is also now currently at https://oss.oracle.com/ksplice/software/

The bottom line is that CentOS is now a second-class citizen with regard to support from KSplice, compared to Ubuntu and Fedora. See the KSplice download page at http://www.ksplice.com/uptrack/download in which CentOS is missing.

Regarding the source code, yes the original code was GPLed is still available. But are you saying that Oracle/KSplice will continue to make available ongoing versions of KSplice?

The link you provided is to a source tarball that was mostly last updated in August 2009, except for a small change in July 2011 (removal of zlib detection). Therefore, either the KSplice code is not being maintained at all, or there are ongoing updates to it that will no longer be released in source form.

Re: Oracle launches "a better alternative to CentOS"

#100

Post by SwellJoe » Wed, Jul 18, 2012, 3:50 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #85

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.

I just want a server OS that is stable as hell, has a long lifecycle, and won't break when updating. None of those are quite as true of Debian and Ubuntu (though Debian and Ubuntu have their own benefits, they just don't match the priorities I have for a server OS), and I prefer yum to apt-get, anyway.

And, most of our customers think the same way. CentOS is, by far, the most popular OS for running Virtualmin/Webmin/Cloudmin. Ubuntu has been gaining pretty fast, particularly now that LTS releases have become relatively stable (6.06 LTS had some awful breakages, 8.04 has some minor breakages, 10.04 and 12.04 seem to be pretty stable so far), but RHEL-based systems still have a strong lead in web hosting.

For people already having to sign a deal with the devil, using Oracle may make sense. But, I don't have that requirement. Everything on all five of our servers works fine on CentOS, RHEL, and SL (and Ubuntu, Debian, etc.).