this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
3 points (80.0% liked)
Linux
48212 readers
797 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's something they were allowed to do. It's something everyone was allowed to do. FOSS means free and open source for everyone, even people and organizations you don't like. Otherwise it's not really free (as in freedom), now is it?
Also, the "contract on top of it" is this license, which is a pretty short read. In my view it's a very inoffensive license compared to Red Hat's coercive license.
Also also, they're forking Oracle Linux from RHEL as of 9.3, so they're won't be "taking" from Red Hat in future anyhow.
It drives me nuts when I see people imply that Oracle was somehow "stealing" from Red Hat by creating a downstream distro. It's not theft when the thing being taken was free and open source! So Oracle copy-pasted RHEL, made some changes and redistributed it. So what? That's something everyone was allowed to do, as long as they didn't violate the open source license while doing it. Oracle isn't violating the open source licenses, the sources are freely available, so why should I fault them for doing what they did?
I think you're also overlooking how much Oracle Linux actually benefited Red Hat themselves. By making Oracle Linux a downstream distro and testing all the Oracle software on it, I'd argue that Oracle actually made RHEL more valuable by increasing the number of enterprise workloads RHEL could support. Yes, a customer could theoretically get support from Oracle instead of Red Hat, but hardly anyone actually did that. I see real-world Oracle Database installs every day and the majority of them are on Red Hat Enterprise Linux proper. Very few are on a downstream. Every one of those RHEL installs is a paying Red Hat customer.
Oracle didn't do all that out of the goodness of their hearts of course, they did it because their customers wanted to standardize on one OS and Oracle wanted to sell them database (and other) software. They did it for profit, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Both Oracle and Red Hat profited from that arrangement. Every enterprise Linux user indirectly benefited from the arrangement too, because it meant there was a less fragmented OS ecosystem to build on! But now Red Hat wants to alter the deal, Vader-style, Oracle is forking Oracle Linux, and you know who loses the most in all of this? All of those users who previously enjoyed the benefit of a less fragmented enterprise OS landscape, myself among them. As far I'm concerned, the blame for that lies squarely at Red Hat's feet.