History Repeats [LWN.net]

History Repeats

Posted Oct 20, 2010 5:33 UTC (Wed) by AndreE (guest, #60148)
In reply to: History Repeats by ldo
Parent article: Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore

More significantly, how could Oracle even run the Unbreakable Linux campaign if RHEL wasn't free software?

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History Repeats

Posted Oct 20, 2010 6:35 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]

Easily. Proprietary doesn't mean what you think it means (throw you dictionary in the bin). It means:

> "differentiated with a view to achieving competitive advantage in the market (and possible some degree of customer lock-in)"

So, when Oracle copied RHEL, that copy was also proprietary. This time to Oracle, because it:

> "differentiated with a view to achieving competitive advantage in the market (and possible some degree of customer lock-in)"

So, these two identical copies are differentiating nicely and locking folks in. Because, you see, if you develop a program that runs under RHEL/Oracle Linux, it won't run anywhere else but on those two proprietary, locked in systems. OK?

Now, if you take the new Oracle Linux, with that modified kernel, in that case you cannot:

1. Port those patches to anything.

2. Run anything but Oracle software on it.

3. Run Red Hat proprietary software on it, such as OpenJDK/JBoss, unless you want the server to explode.

I can go all day with this nonsense... ;-)