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> Hopefully, the "extend" and "extinguish" are not on the agenda. There are certain organisations whose prior behaviour precludes "hope" from a reasonable set

by jsty 6y ago

> Hopefully, the "extend" and "extinguish" are not on the agenda. There are certain organisations whose prior behaviour precludes "hope" from a reasonable set of expectations. Whether or not Oracle is included is left as an exercise to the reader.

EvanAnderson 6y ago
For the reader: Using no-cost Oracle software is playing with fire. Oracle is a machine build to extract license fees and, when necessary, to litigate.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  He's not joking either. I did contracting work for hospitals, upgrading their infrastructure. Strictly backend network stuff -- routers, switches -- but got to sit in on all of the IT meetings. Oracle asked them for license count and a core count of their environment. Newer IT guy sent them all of that info, asked for pricing for upgrades to a few newer Dell systems. Oracle thought they were only using about 3/4 of the machines / cores / licenses they were billing them for, and promptly demanded the hospital group pay for the rest of their usage, as far back as they could prove. Lawyers got involved fast. My work finished before it was resolved so I never got an exact answer but IIRC they paid something extra to Oracle.
  - 72deluxe 6y ago
    Doesn't that seem reasonable though? Pay for the software you're using? I don't see the problem, other than the hospital not keeping tabs on what they'd installed.
skissane 6y ago
As a former Oracle employee I am assuredly biased. But here's my point of view: if Oracle tried to pull one of those moves, people would just jump ship to something else (just like they are doing here in response to Red Hat/IBM). And likely Oracle management knows this, and so they likely won't. Oracle Linux is very different from other Oracle products (e.g. database, ERP systems) in that there are quite low levels of lock-in / switching costs. "Embrace and extinguish" works best for products with high switching costs, which isn't Linux. If you are particularly worried about this, just avoid using any of the features Oracle added to RHEL, like DTrace or Btrfs. Just stick to the RHCK (Red Hat Compatible Kernel) instead of UEK (Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel).

by jsty 6y ago

EvanAnderson 6y ago

For the reader: Using no-cost Oracle software is playing with fire. Oracle is a machine build to extract license fees and, when necessary, to litigate.

blaser-waffle 6y ago
He's not joking either. I did contracting work for hospitals, upgrading their infrastructure. Strictly backend network stuff -- routers, switches -- but got to sit in on all of the IT meetings. Oracle asked them for license count and a core count of their environment. Newer IT guy sent them all of that info, asked for pricing for upgrades to a few newer Dell systems. Oracle thought they were only using about 3/4 of the machines / cores / licenses they were billing them for, and promptly demanded the hospital group pay for the rest of their usage, as far back as they could prove. Lawyers got involved fast. My work finished before it was resolved so I never got an exact answer but IIRC they paid something extra to Oracle.
- 72deluxe 6y ago
  Doesn't that seem reasonable though? Pay for the software you're using? I don't see the problem, other than the hospital not keeping tabs on what they'd installed.

skissane 6y ago

As a former Oracle employee I am assuredly biased. But here's my point of view: if Oracle tried to pull one of those moves, people would just jump ship to something else (just like they are doing here in response to Red Hat/IBM). And likely Oracle management knows this, and so they likely won't. Oracle Linux is very different from other Oracle products (e.g. database, ERP systems) in that there are quite low levels of lock-in / switching costs. "Embrace and extinguish" works best for products with high switching costs, which isn't Linux. If you are particularly worried about this, just avoid using any of the features Oracle added to RHEL, like DTrace or Btrfs. Just stick to the RHCK (Red Hat Compatible Kernel) instead of UEK (Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel).