Oracle will support Red Hat Linux at half the price

Larry Ellison spent a full hour describing how Oracle is moving in to provide enterprise class support for Red Had Linux. Key elements of the service:

• They are not creating a new version of the product
  
• All versions and not the latest will be patched for any bugs that the customer reports
• They will indemnify the customer for all intellectual property issues (e.g. lawsuits from SCO)
• Half price

During Q&A someone asked if they are strangling the goose (Red Hat) in the process of getting the eggs. Larry responded that they want to expand the Linux market that has stalled as Oracle has built their Grid Computing solution on Linux. Also, customer acceptance for Oracle grid on Linux has been low due to IP and support from relatively small vendors only on new versions of the product. The writing is on the wall - Red Hat has a BIG problem.

I think this is significant. I am already thinking that when we refresh our Oracle DB hardware, we should run it on Linux grid.

More on what I heard at the conference in my future posts.