fgibbs's Journal: Re:Reports of Red Hat's death at Oracle's hand are premature

Joe Barr takes us through the meandering rumour mill over the Oracle v. Red Hat situation. On one hand we have Larry Ellison, so aptly described by Barr as a "finely-coiffed prince with a rapper's ego". On the other, a legend in the world of open source software whose name is often seen as being synonymous with Linux. Oracle is taking Red Hat, stripping out the references to anything Red Hat, applying Oracle in their own way, and calling it "Unbreakable Linux": tell me that isn't a challenge to hacker-/crackerdom? Like Bush, it's another "Bring it on!" comment that could be a seen as a threat. Their plan is to lower the cost of the OS as well as that of support: well, they can probably afford that. There's not much they can't afford. Sad, but true. Could Oracle support Red Hat as well as Red Hat themselves? Does Ellison know anything about the terms "open and free"? It will be a sad event if it occurs. Where Oracle brings a wide variety of database systems and database tools, perhaps it would be best if they stayed in their own sand box. I don't think Larry's really all that good at making friends, and especially keeping them. (e.g., Mcnealey).