url Red Hat shares rocked
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison announced the new program at his company's OpenWorld convention here, which has drawn a record 42,000 attendees.
As of Wednesday, Oracle will offer full support to Red Hat customers, at a price that Ellison claimed is roughly 50% lower. He said the inability of Red Hat and other Linux vendors to offer the kind of support needed by large businesses was holding back the progress of the open source operating system. "The lack of enterprise quality support has slowed the adoption of Linux," Ellison said. "This isn't about Red Hat, this is about increasing the adoption of Linux."
Ellison's announcement was something of a surprise. There has been speculation for months that Oracle would compete head to head with Red Hat by offering its own version of Linux. But that would have opened the company to charges that it was splintering Linux for its own selfish ends. Competing with Red Hat by offering support, though, is a much cleaner solution.
"I don't think this will kill Red Hat," Ellison said in response to a question from the audience. "This is capitalism. We are competing," he said.
Oracle, he said, will do a better job fixing bugs than Red Hat, indemnify customers against potential intellectual property issues, and offer better customer support for less money.
A spokesman for Red Hat could not be reached for comment.
