Fate of RedHat

[Ravi Verma]

Dear Friends:

This discussion is very timely for me. I am in the process of installing
Oracle Application Server 10g on a Linux server. My advice for the world
is , DO NOT BUY ORACLE APPLICATION SERVER FOR LINUX. Oracle Application
Server as a product is for either mentally retarded folks for or for
those who are Oracle slaves for variety of reasons, legacy being one of
them. Oracle's commitment to Linux is lip service at best. What is
worse, Oracle is actually causing severe damage to the open source
movement. If we do not watch out, Linux will end up like Solaris in the
guise of Red Hat Linux. If we do not act, more and more proprietary
software companies will release their software to a particular version
of Linux from a specific vendor. Next thing you will see is that Oracle
bought RedHat Linux for a handsome price. Oracle has a large captive
market and "forking" of Linux would have happened. That is if Red Hat
has not already forked it. We must act.

Now coming to the Linux part. Prior to my struggle with installing
Oracle Application Server on Linux, I installed Oracle Database 10g on
Linux. Even though the documentation proclaimed I needed Redhat Linux
Advanced Server, Oracle Database 10g installed fine on the version of
Linux that my colleagues had compiled themselves.

Emboldened by the experience, we set out to install Oracle Application
Server 10g on the box. This time, the documentation was correct. We
needed packages which are part of Redhat Linux Enterprise Server and we
could not find these packages anywhere else. 

When I asked Oracle Corporation as to why their Application would not
run on regular Linux. Their response was, Oracle Appserver 10g is
optimized for Red Hat Enterprise Server and Red Hat Enterprise Server
contains packages that have not been approved by the open source
community yet. 

I ended up purchasing Red Hat Enterprise Server from RedHat and I paid
around $350.0 . I know that I could have downloaded it from some other
sites but we had a deadline and I did not want to take any risks. 

Now the installation of Oracle Application Server is proceeding
smoothly. 

But I am bitter like hell and I have a question.

Why should Red Hat release tools and utilities to sharks like Oracle
Corporation which have not been approved by the open source community? I
am not sure if breaks one of the fundamental tenets of the GPL license.

Regards.

Ravi Verma
001-916-705-3261


-----Original Message-----
From: redhat-list-admin at redhat.com [mailto:redhat-list-admin at redhat.com]
On Behalf Of Robert Canary
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 11:35 AM
To: redhat-list at redhat.com
Subject: Re: Fate of RedHat


I didn't know it was going anywhere!!

What are you talking about?  Is RedHat throughing 
in the towwel??????

Thomas E. Dukes wrote:

> I was just wondering if there is a general concensus (sp) of what 
> everyone is planning to do when RedHat 9.0 is no longer supported?
> 
> Are most going to the Fedora Project or paying to go to the Enterprise

> Linux?
> 
> The EL is freely available for download in .iso form on the internet 
> if you "look".  Would I get in trouble for installing it?  I really 
> don't care to pay for support anyway.
> 
> TIA
> 
> 
> 


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