"Oracle's plans for its own Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) product, announced last week, follow on the heels of Red Hat derivatives put together by dozens of open source projects, including CentOS, Pie Box, and Startcom Linux. But this week, members of the influential CentOS community voiced strong pessimism over Oracle Linux.
"In Q&As with LinuxPlanet, CentOS developers said they think Oracle's inspiration springs from the accomplishments of open source communities. Yet the CentOS community members also took Oracle to task about issues ranging from pricing policies and bug fixes to Oracle's failure to recognize the contributions of volunteers.
"'Oracle [has] seen what has been achieved by projects such as CentOS, and [has] effectively copied the idea, as they are entitled to under the GPL,' said Lance Davis, one of CentOS's volunteer developers..."
