"Oracle made a big noise in the Linux community yesterday by
announcing its own spin on the Linux kernel on top if its so-called
Unbreakable Linux. Oracle presented the announcement as offering a
"modern" Linux kernel on top of its own clone of Red Hat.
Underneath the hype, what's Oracle really offering, and what does
it mean for Linux?
"For years, Oracle has ridden Red Hat's coattails and tried to
present it as a good thing to its customers. Oracle rebrands Red
Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), slaps its own support package on it,
and lets Red Hat do all the heavy development lifting while it
tries to poach Red Hat's customers. All perfectly legal according
to the licenses that RHEL is shipped under, but a bit skeezy
nonetheless. Or perhaps parasitic might be a better word.
"Don't get me wrong, Oracle does contribute to kernel and other
open source development. In fact, Oracle was one of the top 20
employers by kernel contributions from the 2.6.33 kernel (as
measured by Greg Kroah-Hartman). Specifically, Oracle was
responsible for about 1.3% of the changesets in 2.6.33"
