Oracle Linux Adopters Suffer Backlash 274
atbarboz writes "One of the first converts to Oracle's support for Linux said it has endured a public backlash since its decision to drop Red Hat. 'Melbourne company Opes Prime Stockbroking told ZDNet Australia that in the weeks following its announcement to adopt Oracle Linux, upset Linux enthusiasts phoned, e-mailed and wrote about the company online to complain at the decision. "People called us out of the blue to tell us we were idiots," said Opes executive director Anthony Blumberg.'"
stupid users (Score:5, Insightful)
Advocacy or idiocy, it's all in the approach (Score:5, Insightful)
It's idiocy like this that gives any advocacy a bad name.
This is bad for the public image of Linux and OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Want to know one of the main stumbling blocks to further widespread adoption of Linux? If you're one of the people calling Opes a bunch of idiots, look in the mirror.
Enough infighting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Another aspect I don't get in all of this is the preference for Red Hat over Oracle. Red Hat is a great company that has contributed a lot to Linux, but to be fair, they are also a company that does not provide free access to downloads of their signature product (which is why we have CentOS), and a company the CEO of which once stated that Windows was a superior alternative to Linux for desktop users (admittedly a few years ago). Oracle, on the other hand, makes Unbreakable Linux freely availible to anyone who wants to download it, and additionally, also gave a major boost to Linux when it started supporting Linux as a platform in the late 1990s.
To be clear, though, I am not saying that Oracle has a better record than Red Hat, rather, that the two have both made contributions to the Linux community, and for a large number of people to attack a company for using Unbreakable Linux as opposed to RHEL is, in my opinion, retarded.
What a bunch of maroons (Score:4, Insightful)
How dare you not drink our koolaid!" /froth froth froth
We use Linux for a lot of things here where I work, but if we moved to some other OS, or some other comapny changed platforms, I wouldn't take it personally. I only care if they offer inferior service or compromise data, which is more a matter of ops.
Re:stupid users (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:stupid users (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't really be bothered to carry on with that line, but I'm sure 20 other people will.
You're right. Fanboyism, whether directed at linux, wikipedia, apple, terry pratchet, HHGTG or whatever, really only acheives the following:
It attracts more fanboys.
The media don't understand it (well done to apple for evading this one).
It puts 'normal' people off.
If you're trying to be taken seriously in, none of the above are desirable traits at all.
That this happened can only damage Linux's reputation.
Now that's a *really* good way to appear mature (Score:5, Insightful)
A common selling point of open source is "if you don't like the support, you have the freedom to go elsewhere". Reading between the lines of the article, it seems like Opes have done just that. So as soon as someone decides they don't like the support and they want to go elsewhere, this is what they get? One thing I'm sure of, it certainly isn't going to encourage anyone to adopt Red Hat.
I bet the reaction would be totally different if they moved to Oracle Linux from some other commercial Unix.
Re:stupid users (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we stop doing this now? People around here know that "Linux" is a kernel. We get it. We've gotten it for the past 10 years. Here's the deal: when used in this context - and just about any other - the term "Linux" refers "a Linux distribution". You realize this, right? Of course.
They might call it "RHEL" or "Mandriva" or "GNU/Linux" if they want to drink from the FSF evangelical cup, but mostly they call it "Linux". Everyone does. It's part of the tech lingo now.
Get over it and stop trying to be clever by posting pointless semantic retorts like these.
Where is my cut? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe they are your customers but my customers earn that classification by giving me some form of payment. Customers are someone you have an obligation to. Nobody has an obligation to these guys except Oracle.
Allow me to be the first... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is bad for the public image of Linux and O (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't believe a word (Score:4, Insightful)
There are zealots on both sides of the fence. Some of them have more sense than others.
Hang on for a second... (Score:2, Insightful)
Er, Houston? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Enough infighting... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oracle support makes sense for them big-time. (Score:4, Insightful)
They're running Oracle's application server and database on some of the mission-critical servers.
With Oracle supporting both the application and the OS under it there's no time and money lost to finger-pointing when something gets hosed. Instead a single team buckles down and fixes it immediately.
(Presuming they ever need service. One of the comments from Red Hat indicates that they may never have actually had to USE the service contract. Take THAT, Microsoft! B-) )
False Flag? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Don't believe a word (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you got it wrong. I read the post at the link you provided and this guy wasn't a zealot. He's *NOT* saying "contact companies that use Microsoft productsn and bash them". He said that he's tired of the zealots who bash Microsoft and their products and said "instead of complaining here in a forum that Microsoft doesn't monitor, contact Microsoft directly and complain there".
What he said actually makes a ton of sense. Go to the source of what you percieve to be the problem. It's just like when I tell my daughter "if you don't like what the government does, then do something about it. Vote, protest, write you congress people, write the president, run for office. Do something, don't just complain."
Redhat's support is godawful (Score:5, Insightful)
Novell's support isn't great, but at least they call you back. I don't think I've ever gotten Redhat to call back on any support issue over the 4 years I was a customer. (The only reaction I've ever seen from their customer support is to quietly close my tickets that stayed open for more than a year -- without ever putting in an explanatory note or fixing the problem, of course)
If that company wants to go with Oracle so they can actually get real support, more power to them. They could switched to using Microsoft Windows. . . but they didn't - and for that I'm glad.
What's wrong with advocacy? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a lot of talk here about "How dare they tell Opes that they're being idiots!" Like there's something wrong with making your opinion of something heard.
If people only took an interest in something that directly affected them, this world would be a far shallower place. Surely inconvience is a price to pay for the chance to say what you want to say? As far as I can see, no one's being a jackass - there's no direct impairment of the companys trade - people are simply calling them up and telling them they're idiots.
It's called freedom of expression.
Re:stupid users (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mod up. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mod up. (Score:5, Insightful)
To take this one step further: what if, sometime in the future, our technology improved to the point where we could test the alabaster dildo hypothesis, and, lo and behold, there was in fact a dildo out there floating in the Oort cloud. Would you continue to insist that the dildo did not exist? No. You'd probably be surprised, but you'd just revise your position, probably, and start wondering how on earth that dildo got out there in the first place. This is the fundamental difference between a religious belief and a belief.
I have no doubt that some atheists would in fact continue to deny the existence of God, even if real, hard, scientific evidence for his existence could be demonstrated. But my guess is, those "religious" atheists are a small minority. Most would probably be genuinely surprised, and would probably change their minds on the spot. They're just not holding their breath.
Not believing in something that you feel to be unlikely is not the same as unwavering religious belief. Hell, there are lots of religious people that discount scientifically testable findings simply because they contradict what some old shepherd dudes wrote a couple of millenia ago. This is an example of unwavering religious belief. Even in light of evidence to the contrary, their self-delusion persists.
All worked up over only eight servers? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mod up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:stupid users (Score:3, Insightful)
Or the battle to make media use the word hacker in the right way.
Re:Mod up. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:stupid users (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering that a freaking lot of the base utilities in Unix came from BSD, and another huge part is inspired on SRV/4 I therefore decree:
The OS formerly know by the impures as GNU/Linux should now be called AT&TSRV4/SOLARIS/BSD/GNU Linux.
If you use KDE, please append Microsoft Windows to the name, because kde is largerly a copy of windows explorer interface.
Similarly, write your letters to Microsoft and demand them to rename the late windows 95 as BSD/Windows 95 because they have used BSD tcp/ip code.
Re:Mod up. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like atheism is a religion when you go once a week to your CASH meeting to be with other "like-minded" people and give support, yada yada yada.
So tell me... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want a true null belief, that's agnosticism.
Re:Hang on for a second... (Score:2, Insightful)
Being evil is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for being evil. Like badwrong, or badong. Yes, being evil is badong. From this moment, I will stand for the opposite of being evil: gnodab [imdb.com].
But seriously;
Please. What a bunch of self-serving bullshit, straight from the mouth of an ubuntu fanboy. The worst fanboy fanatics I've found aren't the ones for a distribution, but the ones against one; for instance, the anti-redhad crowd.
Interestingly, I find debian people to be the biggest anti-anything-but-my-distribution people around. Personally I'm sick and fucking tired of the whole thing. Debian/Ubuntu kicks ass. Fedora kicks ass. I've used both for a long time. They're different. Shut up and deal with it. Oh, and keep your unsubstantiated fanboy opinions to your damned selves.
Being a fanatic about anything is badong. That goes for politics, religion (hell especially religion), technology, etc.
Why can't we all just chill the hell out and let people enjoy what they enjoy without having to badmouth anything we don't like?
There's just so much crap in your post, I
Wholly Way-To-Speak-Out-Of-Your-Ass batman! You obviously have NO idea how Fedora/RedHat works these days!
How could a distribution built primarily buy a community not care about anyone without money? That doesn't make sense at all! Fedora is built by people like you and me, well, maybe not you, and then RedHat takes it and sells it in a more enterprise oriented way.
RedHat has shown time and time again how much they care about the community and technology. Please dude, take your crap and shovel it somewhere else.
Bye Bye Karma!
Re:Hardware support? (Score:2, Insightful)
Most IT shops have servers dedicated to running their databases, web servers, ERP applications, etc. An OS needs to be certified for the database just as the hardware needs to be certified for the OS. One can certainly argue that neither certification is more or less important than the other, but from a practical standpoint, once you get an OS working on hardware, you're probably good. Other than occasional firmware upgrades, hardware doesn't change, but OS software is very fluid.
If you are an Oracle shop, it's is very preferable to get OS support from Oracle. I've been through the fire with Oracle on Red Hat Linux, and frankly Oracle support was great in comparison to Red Hat support. That's really what the original article is about -- The people complaining about a company switching their Oracle servers to Oracle Linux is just plain silly.
The real debate starts when you are looking into running Oracle Linux for non-Oracle applications. Time will help decide this.