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back to article Send in the clones: Oracle, CentOS catch up to Red Hat Linux 6.5

Now that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.5 has shipped, here come the derivatives, with both Oracle and CentOS releasing new versions of their respective Red Hat–alike Linux distros. Red Hat released RHEL 6.5 in late November as a minor update to its industry-leading enterprise Linux platform. Among its new features are …

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  1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Holmes

    What's good for the goose....

    I feel there is a copyright-able collection of software in that RHEL and Red Hat should sue Oracle for about a beeelllion dollar in response to their Java API shenanigans.

    That would show them.

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    1. John Riddoch
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      Re: What's good for the goose....

      You're right about the copyright. There is a lot of copyright held in RHEL and Linux. Thing is, the license to use said copyrighted code allow Oracle to do what it's doing, that's the cost/benefit of the GPL.

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      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: What's good for the goose....

        Yeah, but the PACKAGING of the whole is not GPL covered.

        Or at least, that remains to be seen in a court.

        I hope I am not giving the Oracle Legal Parasites any ideas here.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
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          Anonymous Coward

          Re: What's good for the goose....

          Yeah, but the PACKAGING of the whole is not GPL covered.

          Errm, let's not go there… I don't want to see someone take out copyright on Linux kernel + glibc/elibc + GNU coreutils…

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    2. Rayson
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      Re: What's good for the goose....

      IIRC, Oracle reviewed what's free and what's not free in RHEL, and then replaced the non-free bits with their own implementation (eg. Redhat -> Oracle Linux logo)

      And Redhat didn't write every single line of code, a lot of the Linux kernel code was written by Google, Intel, IBM, and including Redhat & Oracle!

      The job of the Linux distribution is to make sure that version X of kernel works with version Y of gcc and version Z of glibc. It's a lot of work for sure, but it's not like everything was developed by Redhat, while Oracle and others are complete copycats.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        @Rayron - Re: What's good for the goose....

        You didn't get it!

        Using the Harry Potter analogy Oracle is suing Google for infringing on structure and organization of Java API. Linux kernel is GPLd but the names, organization and structure of the rpm packages belongs to RedHat.

        Also in order to steal RedHat customers, Oracle Linux has to be a complete copycat otherwise they could have done it with Debian for example.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @Rayron - What's good for the goose....

          Oracle Linux has to be a complete copycat otherwise they could have done it with Debian for example.

          Then they'd be copying Debian… what do you suggest, write their own package management tool, ignore LSB and go it alone?

          Give me a break. Sure, user interfaces should be flexible to fit in with the user's work flow and needs, but the back end? There's an advantage in following a standard.

          I didn't see you lobbying for Red Hat to take on Mandrake all those years ago, or for Debian to take on Ubuntu (or Gentoo taking on Sabayon).

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