“Red Hat has changed the way it distributes Enterprise Linux
kernel code in an effort to prevent Oracle and Novell from stealing
its customers, making it more difficult for these competitors to
understand which patches have been applied where.“Some have speculated that the change is designed to make it
harder for Oracle as well as the open source CentOS project to
build their own Linux distributions. But Stevens says this is not
the case. He says the change is meant to hamper Oracle and Novell’s
ability to offer support to customers who are already running Red
Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).“”We made the change, quite honestly, because we are absolutely
making a set of steps that make it more difficult for competitors
that wish to provide support services on top of Red Hat Enterprise
Linux,” Red Hat chief technology officer Brian Stevens tells The
Register, before naming those competitors. “Today, there are two
competitors that I’m aware of that go to our customers directly,
offering to support RHEL directly for them…Oracle and
Novell.”