Red Hat Accuses Oracle of Forking Linux Code Base

In an almost self-contradictory response on its corporate Web site today, Linux producer Red Hat attempted to demonstrate that it was still partnered with its leading database producer, Oracle, while at the same time pummeling it with criticism over its plan announced just this morning to offer competitive product support contracts for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat's semi-padded counter-offensive leads off with the phrase, "Unfakeable Linux," plastered over its home page - a clear shot across the bow at Oracle's new "Unbreakable Linux" program, if not an all-out broadside.

But the second sentence of its official response retracts the guns and extends the olive branch: "Oracle's support for Linux reaffirms Red Hat's technical industry leadership and the end of proprietary Unix," it reads. Later, it goes on: "Red Hat will continue to work closely with Oracle to optimize Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss middleware subscriptions for Oracle products, and to support joint customers."

It's a tenuous situation for Red Hat, as the company cannot afford to cast aside Oracle's assistance in the technical support department. Its Enterprise Linux customers could very well have been acquired by virtue of their reliance upon, and even trust in, Oracle.

So for the same reasons why customers in 1981 invested in Microsoft's MS-DOS to be able to run Lotus 1-2-3, businesses today find themselves supporting Red Hat Linux not so much because they like Red Hat, but because it's been Oracle's preferred Linux supplier. That relationship is changing very, very quickly.

Red Hat now makes the case that Oracle's competitive offering, which will include binary code updates for previous versions of the operating system offered as bug fixes, could jeopardize the compatibility of the Linux code base.

States Red Hat's response, "There is no way to guarantee that changes made by Oracle will maintain API or ABI compatibility; there may be material differences in the code...The changes Oracle has stated they will make will result in a different code base than Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Simply put, this derivative will not be Red Hat Enterprise Linux and customers will not have the assurance of compatibility with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux ecosystem."

If the resulting "fork" ends up not being Red Hat Enterprise Linux, based on comments from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison earlier this year, one could wonder if Oracle would perceive this as necessarily a bad thing. In an interview last July with Forbes, Ellison characterized the wealth of innovation in the Linux community this way: "It's like Fort Knox, except everyone has the keys and takes whatever gold they want whenever they want it."

As legal blogger and Linux advocate Pamela Jones was quick to ascertain this afternoon for Groklaw, Oracle may be trying to capitalize on perceived fears among the Linux user community that companies claiming intellectual property over parts of Linux, such as the SCO Group, could take them to court and hold them liable for unpaid Unix license fees.

As Oracle's online brochure states this morning, "Oracle is committed to the success of the Linux platform and will stand behind our support offering by providing indemnification against intellectual property claims raised against our customers."

Jones pointed out that Red Hat, along with other Linux providers such as HP and Novell, have offered similar indemnification clauses for their customers for years. "How can Ellison not know this?" Jones asked.