Oracle... stab in the back
Ugh, this has really been getting me down. And it's not just that Red Hat stock slipped 25% today. The whole thing is just dirty and it's really gotten under my skin. If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about: Yesterday Oracle announced that they were entering the Linux market with their own distribution, well not really their own, what they're doing is taking the source code that Red Hat releases and rebranding it as Oracle Unbreakable Linux and giving it away while selling support for half of what Red Hat charges. Now something that hasn't come up in the discussions I've seen yet is that not long ago Red Hat opened it's "Knowledge Base" which is basically the pool of information the folks working the phones at Red Hat use to answer questions and solve the simple things. Probably the only reason Oracle can do this is because Red Hat opened up the knowledge base. Red Hat IMHO is one of the greatest companies ever created. It's pretty much the only place I can say I was proud to be a part of the team. To see them taken advantage of like this...
And then you've got the Linux folks that think this is good news and have been carrying around a grudge against Red Hat since they stopped distributing binaries. That was a mistake for Red Hat. It might have made short term sense, but now it's undermined their position. But Red Hat is a company that is committed to open source software. Oracle is not. This hurts Red Hat and a lot of good people who are very committed to seeing free software prosper. And it hurts me pretty deeply to see it proved once again that we live in a world where ideals and the good of the community don't mean shit.
And then you've got the Linux folks that think this is good news and have been carrying around a grudge against Red Hat since they stopped distributing binaries. That was a mistake for Red Hat. It might have made short term sense, but now it's undermined their position. But Red Hat is a company that is committed to open source software. Oracle is not. This hurts Red Hat and a lot of good people who are very committed to seeing free software prosper. And it hurts me pretty deeply to see it proved once again that we live in a world where ideals and the good of the community don't mean shit.