Of course Oracle will be certified! [LWN.net]

Of course Oracle will be certified!

Posted Mar 3, 2011 9:50 UTC (Thu) by jamesh (guest, #1159)
In reply to: Of course Oracle will be certified! by khim
Parent article: Red Hat's "obfuscated" kernel source

But in order for Oracle to certify their software running on RHEL, presumably they need access to RHEL.

If Red Hat cuts off Oracle's access to RHEL completely, then Oracle can't certify their software on that platform.

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This is exactly why this license exist...

Posted Mar 3, 2011 10:46 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

Sure, but then Oracle is constrained by support contract and can not just lift patches from RHEL and land them in Unbreakable Linux.

This is not about the physical ability of doing something: of course the team which certifies RHEL can pass patches around to the team which polishes Unbreakable Linux - but then Oracle will be in very hot water and will be forced to pay sizable sum for damages incurred.

How well it'll work remains to be seen, but the idea is simple enough.

This is exactly why this license exist...

Posted Mar 3, 2011 11:18 UTC (Thu) by PaXTeam (guest, #24616) [Link]

> but then Oracle is constrained by support contract and can not just lift patches from RHEL and land them in Unbreakable Linux.

sure they can, otherwise RH would be violating GPL2 section 6 ("You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.")

whether they 'retaliate' by tearing up the support contract is a different matter, it has zero bearing on the legality of redistributing RH kernel patches.