I would like to remind everyone that you are allowed to download and use Oracle Enterprise Linux or Oracle VM for free. It is not required to purchase a support subscription first. Also, you can in fact run this in production, without a support subscription. You can redistribute this to others inside your own company or to anyone else outside, without a special contract, without a redistribution agreement, without a support subscription.
And best of all, this is not an alpha version of some future possible release with no supported products on top, this is the exact same code you can use on test, development, pay, no pay, supported, non supported production systems.
Why does this matter ?
Well, certain Linux Distribution / Support vendors don't let you freely download their product unless it's pre-alpha stage, have been known to claim that customers can't freely use this product without paying support (despite the GPL), and have even insisted through their sales team that a customer must power off servers when the server's support subscription expired. Now that doesn't make much sense and I wonder how this all works with a product that is released under the GPL. But this sort of FUD is not good. Especially not when it comes from a self proclaimed open source leader.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=open+source+leader
Comments (4)
Wim,
This self-proclaimed Open Source leader is the same company that produces the software that you rebuild and release as Oracle Enterprise Linux.
So I find it pretty ironic that you doubt them being the leader, while you are in fact following their lead :-)
Greetings from Belgium !
Posted by Dag Wieers | September 30, 2008 1:58 PM
Posted on September 30, 2008 13:58
I had one such subscription that expired. The server wasn't worth resubscribing so all I did was change all the update sources to point CentOS repositories, ran an update and the thing seamlessly rebranded itself.
Never had any trouble with it since. I don't know if I'd recommend this on a production server.
Posted by Sam Hall | September 30, 2008 4:32 PM
Posted on September 30, 2008 16:32
Hi Wim:
Can I make an Oracle Enterprise Linux appliance for VMWare and put it for free download at vmware.com?
There are a lot of Virtual appliance for many Linux distros which also are GPL, but I didn't find an OEL :(
http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/cat/45
Best regards, Marcelo.
Posted by Marcelo Ochoa | November 20, 2008 12:11 PM
Posted on November 20, 2008 12:11
Wim,
This is a smart move and a timely one. I have referenced your post at http://sharevm.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/oracle-vm-templates-virtual-appliances-available-today/
It seems to me that VMWare, Microsoft and Citrix consider this technology to be strategic, i.e., they are investing in anticipation of growth and are evangelizing, although no one seems to have made any money so far. VMWare opened the Virtual Appliance Marketplace in 2006 but the downloads for their most popular appliances number a few hundred, they have not yet crossed the magical threshold of 1000 downloads.
http://sharevm.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/virtual-appliance-a-survey/
A dominant majority of the appliances seem to involve open source software on Linux, primarily because the software licensing considerations do not pose a barrier for the early adopters. The obvious side-effect of this is that there is not much revenue tied to this market today. Until the major software vendors, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, etc., rationalize their licensing, the growth in unit deployments will be driven by open source stacks.
Posted by Paul Evans | February 1, 2009 4:06 PM
Posted on February 1, 2009 16:06