No, Red Hat develops software, Oracle mooches off Red Hat's work. They have made this change to ensure that they can stay in business, which is important because unlike Oracle, they actually do work on the software they ship.
They can't adopt Oracle's tactics because there is nobody else doing what Red Hat does.
SUSE does what Red Hat does (work on the software it ships). In addition to that it also provides Enterprise Support for RHEL :). Which might make it both good and evil you could say or maybe just chameleonic.
This needs a citation.
I for one do not agree with you. Looking at the statistics of top kernel contributors for kernel 2.6.35 by lines changed¹, Red Hat can claim 7.8% of lines changed while Novell (SuSE) is at 4.7%. The difference is considerable but I do not think it's fair to say that that it's "Not to anywhere even close to approaching Red Hat's extend[sic]".
These statistics obviously cover just the kernel. The Linux environment is much larger than that, and it should be pointed out that SuSE is _the_ major contributor to KDE with openSUSE being generally regarded as the top-of-the-line KDE distribution. Novell also contributes significantly to GNOME.
I do not want to turn this comment into a laundry list of SuSE contributions to Linux, so I'll just say that IMO SuSE are certainly holding their own as the 2nd largest enterprise Linux vendor in terms of contribution to the general Linux ecosystem. If you do not agree, I would appreciate it if you could back your opinion with substantial evidence as opposed to just making unsubstantiated claims.
Being strict, actually isn't Linux just a kernel? Just being a BSD troll.
I am no Oracle fan but I'm already using Btrfs and am pleased to finally have something in the same vein as ZFS for Linux.
Obviously, they didn't adopt all of Oracle's tactics. Nobody else is doing what Oracle does either (though we can be happy about that).
RH is a small company that has to compete against behemoths with a full portfolio of software. While doing that, they make meaningful contributions that benefit all. A company like Oracle buries the cost of their RHEL clone in a larger purchase, or wedges it into an ELA.
Why is it so unreasonable for Red Hat to force Oracle to do their own homework, especially where the bleeding edge development work is all openly available via Fedora.
"We're committed to open source ... open source makes the best code in the world ... were innovators in open source ... we just decided to give ourselves a competitive advantage" ... WTF!?
Its like in one breath he snuck it in. Bullcrap.
All they have done in this case is make a legal, wise, and likely necessary move to protect themselves. Nothing they have done damages the kernel or prevents you from getting it. Nothing they have done damages any other OS projects.
Sounds like you've got a whole mouthful of sour grapes there...
And until recently, they did.
Red Hat's documentation is better now, but documentation tends to rot when people can't see it until they're in the midst of using it. I feel entitled to the knowledge base because I'm not paying for something unless I have a good idea of the sort of issues I'll have when using it, and what the company does to resolve them. Red Hat has made a fine business respecting this up until now.
On the other hand, a lack of publicly available documentation is less important when source is available.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)
Seems like all it requires is that you say "We changed this file, and we changed it on this date." I suppose one could question whether giving detailed information about the changes is simply the "spirit of the rule" or if it's actually "going above and beyond."
Now in your post that I was replying to, on the other hand, you clearly seem to be talking about the broader social contract that the open source community is organized around. Red Hat makes the best code and documentation they have available to anyone, and in return the community does the same.
Red Hat has loudly trumpeted the superiority of this social contract over the proprietary avenue. Now their documentation has become proprietary. That says to me they believe the social contract and the business model they've built around it are somehow flawed.
Personally, I don't have a dog in this fight, and so I don't feel at all entitled to their documentation. If I'm working with Red Hat I'll be working with someone who has a support contract. But if I were, for example, someone involved with Fedora who had worked on resolving issues in Red Hat, I would feel like Red Hat was acting improperly, regardless of legality. Are you arguing that it's okay to free ride on the work of the community and not give back what you create? Stop muddying the waters by flitting back and forth between morality and legality, please.
I bet some comments may even help you figure out why they made a specific change.
Unfortunately, I believe all Oracle will just pay some proxy for RH support and get the same individual patches.
Actually Oracle started copying RHEL4 as Oracle Unbreakable Linux, but it wasn't a threat until the RHEL5 variant.
If, hypothetically, they were able to close, to own, the source they were dealing with, it really wouldn't matter how much they'd invested in the previously open source. It would be just source they invested in 'cause they wanted to sell it and there would be nothing "altruistic" about it (and no benefit for any who didn't pay them).
So, no, they can't compensate for withholding information by investing in open source. They might currently be only withholding an "acceptable" amount but their investment in open source and their information-withholding can't be naively compared to see if they "balance out".
When we released RHEL 6 approximately four months ago, we changed the release of the kernel package to have all our patches pre-applied. Why did we make this change? To speak bluntly, the competitive landscape has changed. Our competitors in the Enterprise Linux market have changed their commercial approach from building and competing on their own customized Linux distributions, to one where they directly approach our customers offering to support RHEL.
Frankly, our response is to compete. Essential knowledge that our customers have relied on to support their RHEL environments will increasingly only be available under subscription. The itemization of kernel patches that correlate with articles in our knowledge base is no longer available to our competitors, but rather only to our customers who have recognized the value of RHEL and have thus indirectly funded Red Hat’s contributions to open source that will advance their business now and in the future.
TL;DR: Competition is hard, especially when we are "open" and everyone else is not, so we adopted our competitors' tactics.