[CentOS-devel] [off topic] Oracle Lnux

Fri Jan 5 09:14:21 UTC 2007
Daouda Lo <daoudalo at gmail.com>

On 1/5/07, Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org> wrote:
> 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.

It's the same policy as RedHat and its RHN thingie. Both ORacle and
Redhat provide fee-based updates.
Fedora and Centos are the ways to go if you want to be totally free.

cheers,