Friday, October 27, 2006

Moosy about Unbreakable

There can be only one,or two...not three. RHAT stock down with 30%.

Every time RedHat comes out with a new release, Oracle will take the source code, remove all of the RedHat trademarks, and release it as Unbreakable Linux. Oracle will allow both RedHat and Unbreakable installs to get support from them, including bug fixes, patches, and other software.

Oracle will basically be offering a higher level of support than RedHat for the same exact software for a lot less money. RedHat is going to be forced to drastically reduce their prices just to compete.

We at Moosy think that over the longterm Oracle's Unbreakable Linux will fork off, especially if this ends up seriously damaging RedHat, but for now Unbreakable Linux is nothing more than a re-branded copy of RedHat.

longterm:
Oracle says it will not be 'Oracle Linux', but I think it already is.

Think about:
- gfs vs ocfs2
- identity stack integration
- enhancements from Oracle customers that RedHat does not wanna fix
- management of a virtualized environment (XEN)

Examples like this will force Oracle to own their own distro.

reaction from RedHat

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what stops the same thing happening to SUSE. Say IBM wants to support Linux on their boxes. What stops them and what does that do to Novell/SUSE?

Anonymous said...

Nothing will stop others todo the same thing with suse.

For RH this is 98% of their business, for Novell it is not.

Anonymous said...

Novell's Official Response

http://www.novell.com/company/blogs/cmo/?p=32

BTW: what is Novell's business then? Thought they were THE Open Source vendor?

Anonymous said...

Novell is nothing else than a distributor of Suse Linux, same for other Linux vendors, their added vallue is everything around the OS

Anonymous said...

Most excellent thread. I've blogged similarly

http://kevinclosson.wordpress.com/2006/10/27/unbreakable-linux-theft-of-patented-technology/

I think chaos is the word.