Correcting a few statements here about OEL.
OEL is free to use and distribute http://public-yum.oracle.com 
https://oss.oracle.com/). It is used and deployed on more than just Sun/Oracle 
hardware. The UEK kernel additionally has it's use cases outside of the 
standard EL kernel whilst maintaining and riding on top of the standard EL user 
space. As an example I work with Dell on some of the OEM hardware we have them 
for use and I know OEL is also supported and tested by Dell on their HW because 
customers ask for it. Likewise for HP. Support can be purchased as well for OEL 
on any x86 hardware upon which the user wishes to run it. We are spooling up 
our HELiOS 6.5 spin of SL right now and for a number of reasons will including 
the UEK3 kernel and a few userspace bits from OEL (EX:btrfs-progs). 

regards,
- Chris
________________________________________
From: owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov 
[owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov] on behalf of John Lauro 
[john.la...@covenanteyes.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 4:59 PM
To: Patrick J. LoPresti
Cc: scientific-linux-users@fnal.gov
Subject: Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious

Your first assumption, although largely correct as a generality it is not 
entirely accurate, and at a minimum is not the sole purpose.  That is why 
companies have mission statements.  They rarely highlight the purpose of making 
money, although that is often the main purpose even if not specified.  What is 
Red Hat's mission?  It is listed as:
            To be the catalyst in communities of customers, contributors, and 
partners creating
            better technology the open source way.

Making things exceedingly difficult would go against the stated mission.  In my 
opinion it would also go against making money as it would kill the eco system 
of vendors that support RedHat Enterprise Linux for their applications.

There are so many distributions out there, the biggest way for them to not make 
money is to become insignificant.  Having free
alternatives like Centos keeps high market share of the EL product and ensures 
compatibility and a healthy eco system.  If there was not open clones of EL, 
then ubuntu or something else would take over and the main supported platform 
of enterprise applications, and then the large enterprises that pay for RedHat 
support contracts would move completely off.

Having people use Centos or Scientific linux might not directly help the bottom 
line, but for RedHat it's a lot better than having people use ubuntu or suse.  
Oracle not being free could pose a bigger threat, but either RedHat remains on 
top as they are the main source for good support, or they do not and Oracle 
will have to pick up the slack for driving RedHat out of business. and what's 
left of RedHat would have to start using Oracle as TUV...  I don't see too many 
switching to Oracle besides those that are already Oracle shops.



----- Original Message -----
> From: "Patrick J. LoPresti" <lopre...@gmail.com>
> To: scientific-linux-users@fnal.gov
> Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 12:45:01 PM
> Subject: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
>
> RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making
> money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action,
> ever -- is motivated by that goal.
>
> The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this
> move is going to make them money?
>
> Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion.
>
> Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat
> sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting
> them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as
> being
> in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind.
>
> SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red
> Hat
> will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial
> releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific
> Linux will be collateral damage.
>
> I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope
> I am.
>
>  - Pat
>

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