[CentOS-devel] Re: [off topic] Oracle Lnux

Fri Jan 5 16:43:27 UTC 2007
Scott Silva <ssilva at sgvwater.com>

Johnny Hughes spake the following on 1/5/2007 12:58 AM:
> On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 07:56 -0200, TEOTONIO wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> this is my first post. :-)
>>
>> Enterprise Linux Oracle is Centos or is based on Centos???
>>
>> Sory my bad english :(
>>
>> I am a author of distro Libertas based on Fedora Core 3.0, instaled in
>> plus 9000 PCs on scholl LAN (Belo Horizonte-MG Brazil).
>>
> 
> Well ...
> 
> CentOS is based on the source files released here:
> 
> http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/
> 
> Oracle Unbreakable Linux is based on the same source files.
> 
> Oracle did also take some of the work that we have done (our changes to
> above linked source files) and incorporated it into their product.
> CentOS is GPL, so there is nothing wrong with that ... though they
> should have that in their press and they don't.
> 
> Still I would objectively say, that for the most part their product is
> based on the RHEL sources (as CentOS only changes maybe 2% of the files
> for artwork/trademark reasons) ... but they have certainly also based
> their changes {on the files that need changing} on our work as well.
> 
> Now ... if they would stop giving away free ISOs with security issues
> and not allowing those to be updated for free, their potential customers
> could actually deploy their product for testing and not fear that their
> servers would be owned.
> 
> Oracle REALLY, REALLY, REALLY needs to rethink this policy ... giving
> away free ISOs that contain packages with known security vulnerabilities
> and not providing free security updates is wrong headed and ABSOLUTELY
> IRRESPONSIBLE.
> 
> I can't understand how they can sleep at night.
> 
> If they want to charge for the updates (and not allow people to get them
> for free), then they should also only distribute the ISOs to people who
> can get those updates.  Doing what they are now doing, purposely giving
> out ISOs with security issues and no update path, is going to create a
> legion of zombie, hacker owned, machines that enterprise admins think
> are OK because they are Oracle ... amazing :(
> 
> Thanks,
> Johnny Hughes
> 
It is another example of razor blade marketing. Give away the razor, and
charge up the nose for the blades!


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