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Comment by nodata | Hacker News Reader

> I know we all like to think that corporations are evil and the presence of corporate interests actually messes stuff up.

But Oracle actually is evil.

> But this really is one case where you want the oomph of bilion-dollar company making sure that you get your security updates in time.

Don't be naive, Oracle wouldn't be doing this if they didn't see a substantial business advantage.

> No one else is providing that. Oracle happens to be doing so, and we're making it available to you for free, so why shouldn't you benefit from that?

Awww. Oracle is so altruistic!

Oracle has proven time again that they can't be trusted, and giving Oracle more control can only be bad.

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The guy you're replying to has implied he works for Oracle and helped bring this to fruition. Instead of asking what the advantage they see is or diving into it, you've accused him of lying and being a part of an evil organization.

Oracle's a business--they make good products that many businesses rely on. While they've done some stuff that this crowd greatly disproves of (see: Java copyright/patents lawsuits), their motivation for doing this could be as simple as keeping the brand's security image in place.

I just want you to know that you had a good opportunity here, and you wasted it.

Maybe so, but if I was Oracle I would take this as great feedback. My guess is that the majority of people running CentOS have a very similar attitude, so they should understand that this will be the reaction, whether it is fair or not.

It is up to Oracle to figure out how to build the required trust to market this, not up to consumers to accept it given Oracle's history. Millions of people are missing billions of opportunities every day (and you're probably one of them!) but you don't blame them for it, you figure out how to market a product more effectively instead.

The "guy you're replying to" is Waseem Daher, who was COO and co-founder of KSplice, a startup acquired by Oracle. KSplice provides a mechanism for streaming updates to Linux Kernel and used to support CentOS, Ubuntu and Fedora. After Oracle acquired KSplice, they discontinued support for CentOS while continuing to support the other distros. Oracle also no longer makes available the formerly GPLed code of KSplice.

lxnews.org/2011/07/31/centos-might-re-implement-ksplice/

About half of this is accurate.

We didn't discontinue support for CentOS; our legacy customers can continue to get access to Ksplice for all the distros we used to support. We did stop accepting new customers for anything other than Oracle Linux, though.

The same source code that Ksplice made available at http://ksplice.com/software is also now currently at https://oss.oracle.com/ksplice/software/

The bottom line is that CentOS is now a second-class citizen with regard to support from KSplice, compared to Ubuntu and Fedora. See the KSplice download page at http://www.ksplice.com/uptrack/download in which CentOS is missing.

Regarding the source code, yes the original code was GPLed is still available. But are you saying that Oracle/KSplice will continue to make available ongoing versions of KSplice?

The link you provided is to a source tarball that was mostly last updated in August 2009, except for a small change in July 2011 (removal of zlib detection). Therefore, either the KSplice code is not being maintained at all, or there are ongoing updates to it that will no longer be released in source form.

Sounds like the classic bait and switch. Down the road there surely will be more interesting features (virtualization comes to mind) that can unfortunately not be supported in the free version of Oracle linux. But hey, special deal, just $999/yr and you won't have to migrate to a different distro for that one feature!

Plus included with the price you get our awesome support-plan which you never call, but when you do it will only take weeks before they return a canned response designed to make you buy more products instead of actually solving your problem!

Personally I don't regret sticking with deb-based distros. They have problems of their own, but at least none of this extortion-bullshit.

As long as we're noticing how you guys sold out, I'd like to bring up the Ksplice blog.

It used to have some really interesting stuff on there, but after the move to Oracle, the interesting posts disappeared.

I'm talking specifically about 'Coffee shop internet access'. Man that was a cool post and it taught my brother and I a LOT. Then it disappeared, along with most mirrors of it. I was able to find one left, here: http://www.getoto.net/noise/2011/01/18/coffee-shop-internet-...

after around a full 60 minutes of searching-- and it doesn't have the images from the original.

I emailed you guys, and J was kind enough to send me the text of the post, but again no images. She said she hoped the coffee shop post would make it to the oracle blog, but this was about 6 months ago so I don't think that'll happen. Anyway, I hope you're able to do good at Oracle, and I hope that you're still trying to, and I hope that you don't get taken advantage of.

And with this they posted it. It seems like a time issue, not Oracle censoring a 'hacking' post. And now I feel a bit like a cynical doofus.

https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/coffee_shop_internet_...

Yeah, getting these posts back up has largely been a casualty of our lack of resources, not any sort of coordinated malicious plot against them. But we're glad you like 'em! (and I think your comment was the little bit of kick we needed to just go and bring it back.)

But Oracle actually is evil.

Evil is stomping a kitten to death.

Evil is the gulag, the concentration camp, the cultural revolution.

Oracle is just a business.

They tried to make APIs copyrightable. That's about the same magnitude of evil as legalising software patents.

And the GP was giving his honest opinion. An opinion that is held by many people I've interacted with in the open source community regarding Oracle. Maybe instead of browbeating him over it you could consider encouraging Oracle to pay attention to things like this and do something about recovering their image. BTW, it isn't illegal in any jurisdiction I am aware of to harbor personal feelings towards brands and companies. That's what marketing is all about anyway.

For a large segment of us (presumably the target market) there's no point in Oracle trying to recover their image. Based on direct personal experience I will fight tooth and nail against giving Oracle one red cent or one idle second. I can't think of anything they could do in the short or medium term that would change my mind so why waste time trying? Buying purchasing managers steak dinners and lapdances has a much better return on investment.

And the GP was giving his honest opinion

I was giving my honest opinion of his honest opinion.

An opinion that is held by many people

These people have a weak grasp of the concept of 'evil'. In my opinion.

Maybe instead of browbeating

I wasn't doing that. My opinion.

You could consider encouraging Oracle

I'm nobody Oracle is going to listen to. I say this as a guy who has been dealing with Oracle for about a decade, supported database and application servers.

Oracle pays attention to guys that write checks. And not just any checks but big checks.

If the CIO of (say) AT&T brings this up with his sales rep, things will happen. Me .. not so much.

BTW, it isn't illegal

I believe you are reading things that I did not write.

Businesses can be evil. Crushing your competition via patents is evil. Damaging others way out of proportion to your own gain is evil. Buying elections with a flood of money is evil. The Libor scandal is evil because it screwed millions of contracts. Stomping a kitten is pretty tame by comparison.

You're completely warped view on life warrants serious psychiatric help.

And surprised that you think defending patents is evil because almost every major IT company right now is doing that.

>And surprised that you think defending patents is evil because almost every major IT company right now is doing that.

If all the sheep walk off the cliff then it's the right thing to do!

Non sequitur. If everyone does something and it's an evil thing to do, then everyone is being evil and should stop being evil.

Don't argue that patents are good because everyone uses them. Find a better rationale for your patent love!

You have a weak grasp of the definition of evil.

Have a good day.

An example of software-industry practices by Oracle: After Oracle bought ATG (e-commerce software vendor), they assigned an engineer to remove the code that detected and limited the number of concurrent users. ATG software is licensed by the number of concurrent users, and had for a long-time a mechanism to limit usage to the actual number of licenses for that specific customer. Oracle removed the limit code so that some customers would unwittingly exceed their licensed number. The intent was that these customers could be targeted by Oracle's license police, who'd extract high financial penalties.

A hard-nosed business decision. Potentially lucrative, profitable. Not illegal. But demonstrating utter contempt and manipulation of their customers. If this is how Oracle treats its own customers, how do you think they treat competitors like CentOS and the OSS community?

I am quite familiar with ATG, having worked with the product since 2001. I don't believe that Oracle removed the license limitation on purpose, but rather to make ATG consistent with their other products which you can download, install and develop with, but as soon as you use them for production you have to pay.

You also have to factor in that ATG's old licensing department was chronically incapable of delivering the correct license files: they used to send out production licences for the wrong IP addresses, session limitations or bad expiration dates, and it wasn't uncommon to have 3 or 4 runarounds with them in order to have what you paid for.

That said, I'm not looking forward to use Oracle Linux in any of our production servers, unless my clients specifically asks for it and pays for the support. And this support has to be of very high quality, it will take me just one canned reply to put CentOS back in.

Businesses are sociopathic - especially since corporations claim the rights of a "person" under law.

Current North American society appears to deem sociopathic behavoir as being evil - so it's not much of a stretch to claim businesses are evil.

Not saying they can't act good or do good in society though as many obviously do. It's also worth noting that good/evil are not objective binary things - so your definition of evil is likely different then the GP's.

Current North American society

If this is an actual opinion held by North American society - whatever that is - then NAs needs to re-think it's definition.

It's also worth noting that good/evil are not objective binary things - so your definition of evil is likely different then the GP's.

Ah.

I hold to the - possibly old-fashioned - notion - that there is good, there is evil, and they are objective binary states.

>>Oracle is just a business.

It's just that it's the kind of business that makes me glad kitten stomping doesn't have an appreciable ROI .

"Oracle is just a business."

True, and one that exists to maximise shareholder value. Alas, that aim may not contribute positively to the larger picture, hence various forms of regulation that exist in many countries.

This is an issue too large for this particular page.

It's quite possible, that, being a huge company, they do a lot of bad crap (they are not high on my list), but there are some good people there trying to do good things.

so when centos is dead and buried and oracle turns round and shafts us we should say "well, there were some good people there...."?

Given that Red Hat still can't get some people to move off RHEL 3, I'm amused that you think this could actually kill CentOS :)

And in the unlikely event that it were to happen, you could just switch to Scientific Linux, or whatever new RHEL clone would crop up in the wake of the news.

or we could stick with the guys who have given us centos.

i am not sure why your compassion is so selective. people who work for fucking oracle are misunderstood saints, while the poor sods that put centos together - who have never done anyone any harm - should be thrown to the wolves.

I don't think I've ever espoused that opinion! I like CentOS a lot. I had a beer with Karanbir in London in 2009, and I'm totally impressed that they're able to put out an incredibly popular Linux distribution with next to nothing, resource-wise.

But if I were a sysadmin, would I run CentOS in production? Is CentOS perfect? I'd say no on both counts, and I think there's nothing wrong with saying "There's room for improvement, and we think we've done better."

but at what price? at the price of losing centos because oracle are a predatory monster driven solely by greed?

put it another, more constructive way: wouldn't it be better to help centos rather than try to kill them? why not take that route?

Most users of either one will likely not contribute anything at all back besides simply being part of the "network effects". I'm not a fan of Oracle either, but your rhetoric is in the red zone...

you're right i'm angry. i'm sorry if it offends you. but still, i don't see what you're argument is. are you saying that because i am angry and "rhetorical" it's ok to switch to oracle?

is noticing that i am angry somehow going to make everything work out? when centos folds and oracle decide to "raise margins" me being angry will make centos come back?

because if not, i would suggest worrying a little less about my emotional state and a little more about the future of your operating system.

I don't use CentOS actually, I'm fairly happy with Ubuntu, and if I didn't use that, I'd go back to Debian.

For many years I was a Debian package maintainer, and Debian got by ok without much corporate support, despite the existence of Redhat.

In other words, your thinking is way too zero-sum. I think there's room for both. Perhaps the competition will make Redhat think about their model some too, improving things for everyone.

I'm having problems with seeing why CentOS may cease as a result of this move from Oracle and Mr Daher.

CentOS is free, so as long as the sponsors continue to sponsor the work on CentOS and as long as whoever pays for the servers &c continues to do so, the project can continue.

Scientific Linux and PUIAS exist for other reasons than commercial server provisioning and those reasons will probably stay around.

The CentOS and Scientific Linux forums contain useful information, the mailing lists contain more technical information. Oracle won't to my knowledge be providing self-help forums or other community features as they wish to package support as a product. I can imagine Oracle Linux users who do not require support dropping into, posting to and contributing to the CentOS and SciLi forums.

How will CentOS (or another clone) be impacted to the point of extinction by Oracle Linux? Am I being dense here?

That fish rots from the head down.

I've met a lot of smart and friendly developers who work for Oracle (or companies acquired by Oracle) so I know for a fact there are many people in that organization which are genuinely good and really smart.

However, it seems to be a culture which promotes aggressive "shark" type personalities into leadership positions - people who, in my experience, have less focus on ethical business practices and more focus on increasing profits, crushing competition, and advancing up the ladder.

It obviously makes for a successful company but it's a not one which I would trust to have my business' best interests at heart.

The Nazi party had some good people trying to do good things too. Just sayin'.

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