I don't think many people who want to use something stable like CentOS, but don't want to pay for a RHEL support contract would want to pay Oracle for RHEL-but-with-Oracle-sprinkles-on-top
Not to mention Oracle is not known to leave money on the table, and if they see they can start charging for Oracle Linux because there's no large well known free version, I wouldn't put it past them.
Put another way, if you jump ship from CentOS because IBM caused Red Hat to change it into a funnel to pay them money, if you landed on Oracle, you might be setting yourself up to do it all over again fairly soon.
> Not to mention Oracle is not known to leave money on the table
You're underselling it: Oracle grab money in a way that I would describe as "aplomb ruthlessness". They've managed to fuck no less than 3 orgs I've worked for.
If they ask you for a license count or how many cores are in use, ignore them. Larry Ellison doesn't need another boat.
"Unlike many other commercial Linux distributions, Oracle Linux is easy to download and completely free to use, distribute, and update. Oracle Linux is available under the GNU General Public License (GPLv2). Support contracts are available from Oracle. "
never, Ever, EVER trust Oracle. Especially with something as important as an open source product. Evidence: Oracle's Sen. VP Glueck statement that "There is no math that can justify open source from a cost perspective." No chance you'll ever see me running OEL.
Been burned by them before. Not at liberty to give details, but the outcome is that I never choose Oracle for anything for the rest of my career. Even if it would save time and money.
The fact that you aren't comfortable discussing the details of how you were screwed by Oracle, even anonymously on the internet, is really all anyone needs to know about Oracle.
From their page, does this even read professional? Sounds like some startup wrote it trying to make them look bigger than they're.
Community based sounds better to me.
> But if you're here, you're a CentOS user. Which means that you don't pay for a distribution at all, for at least some of your systems. So even if we made the best paid distribution in the world (and we think we do), we can't actually get it to you... or can we?
