Bonum Certa Men Certa

To Oracle, 'Community' Means Paying Oracle Customers

Summary: Oracle continues to extend only its own distribution of GNU/Linux (which is a ripoff of another), leaving everyone else out in the cold

Oracle, the selfish company run by a selfish man (who has risen to power in part thanks to CIA help), just announced a new clone of Red Hat Linux 6.5 [1,2]. This clone is not free and it's not about Free/libre software, it is about control (by Oracle). It's merely a copy of Red Hat Linux 6.5 [3,4] and it has some Oracle-only 'features' [5]. Oracle didn't make these, it bought these from Sun.



This attitude from Oracle is not surprising. Given the way Oracle just slapped OpenOffice.org at Apache (with little or nothing done to help) [6], leaving it for people to take from there [7] and to enhance [8] amid the decline of offline word processors [9], the treatment of GNU/Linux by Oracle is not shocking. Other than btrfs, what has Oracle really done for GNU/Linux? Almost nothing. Even btrfs is hardly promoted by Oracle anymore. Let's face it. Oracle just does its own thing the proprietary way (trying to keep up with what's shareable [10] and then adding its own private extensions at the top). To Oracle, Free/libre software is a rival [11] which it is only ever willing to co-opt in order to help sell its expensive proprietary software. When it comes to Free software, Oracle is a user, not a developer. btrfs needed to be licensed like the kernel it targets. ⬆

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. Send in the clones: Oracle, CentOS catch up to Red Hat Linux 6.5


  2. Linux Top 3: RHEL Clones Update as Linux Mint Gets a new Dash of Cinnamon
    This past week marked the final release of Linux Mint 16 codenamed 'Petra'. So far, Linux Mint has been made available in two officials builds, one with the new Cinammon 2.0 desktop and the other with MATE.


  3. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5 ships, but still no RHEL 7 in sight
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.5 has reached general availability following a six-week beta period, making it the first minor release of RHEL 6 to ship since version 6.4 in February.


  4. Fact sheet: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5
    The latest iteration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (6.5) is now available, and it's a serious contender to usurp all other platforms as king of the enterprise space. This particular release was designed specifically to simplify the operation of mission-critical SAP applications. The new release focuses on key enterprise-specific areas....



  5. Oracle integrates DTrace debugger into its Linux distribution


  6. Apache OpenOffice 4.1 to Bring Enhanced Accessibility Support
    The Apache OpenOffice project is pleased to announce that it has successfully integrated support for the Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) and IAccessible2 interfaces. Support for these interfaces enables screen readers and other assistive technologies to work with Apache OpenOffice, which in turn enables greater productivity by OpenOffice users who are blind or who have low-vision.


  7. Stakeholders and Remixes: the other names of true communities
    This year we had a workshop dedicated to LibreOffice migrations inside the 3ctor and I spoke about what was going on in France. I was however reminded of a very important notion during my various conversations with the audience. Free Software licences pass on several rights to the users. But these rights or freedoms, while essential, do not mandate how a Free Software project community should work. If anything, that would be quite out of topic and perhaps going against the very spirit of Software Freedom. Among these freedoms, two are implied that are of particular importance but often overlooked in regard of Free Software development projects: the right to fork and the right -as a user- to leave the software or the vendor/supplier who is providing you support and services on the FOSS stack in question.


  8. LibreOffice now has a built in XML-parser


  9. Word processors are no longer central to the computing experience
    Word processors are no longer central to the computing experience, but there are still good reasons to use them. The question is, how well do the work in today's computing environment?


  10. Oracle Linux 6.5 and Docker


  11. Devil is in the details of Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration
    EnterpriseDB execs have moved customers off Oracle, but contracts and app packages can tangle switch to PostgreSQL

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slop is "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like GNU."
What Torvalds says about "hey hi" ("AI") does not prove he is in charge
 
Intercontinental Brigading - Part VIII - How We Convinced British Police That the Americans Were Just Manipulating and Tricking Them at the Expense of British Taxpayers
Their job is to protect communities, not the feelings of Americans who threaten violence
IBM CEO Boasts to the Media About "AI" Momentum While Sacking His Workers Who Worked On It
Recently, IBM took a bailout and got rid of many workers
Corrupt Media Benefits Corrupt Officials (the Case of IBM)
IBM’s Pre-Earnings Publicity Blitz
Links 19/10/2026: "Investors Disturbed by Anthropic's Financial Data" and "The "Dead Internet" Is Here" (Slop and Bots Running on Huge Debt)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/10/2026: ICEYE/SAR, Smol Servers, and Starting an Open Access Journal
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 18, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, October 18, 2026
Gemini Links 18/10/2026: Hobbies, RAM Prices, and Avoiding GAFAM
Links for the day
Intercontinental Brigading - Part VII - Weekend Abuse Reported to British Police (Rogue Actors Take No Breaks)
Some time in the next few days I'll share an elaborate report
Gemini Links 18/10/2026: Hospitals, Literature, Fixed IP Addresses, and Sunday Types
Links for the day
Links 18/10/2026: Brazil Reduces Deforestation, Some 4-5 Gray's Inn Square Scandals in Insolvency Petition of Reform UK
Links for the day
UbuntuBuzz is LLM Slop
Tragic
"Assisted by NSA" and "It's Just a Tool" (So Fine!)
Free software is meant to be produced by people who value and pursue Software Freedom
Gemini Links 18/10/2026: Movies, Greenland, and Detectors of Slop Plagiarism
Links for the day
Links 18/10/2026: TikTok Censors Criticism of MElon, "Trump’s Latest Attempt to Be the King", and "Big Tech Oligarchs Have a Terrible Plan for Humanity"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 17, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, October 17, 2026
Gemini Links 17/10/2026: Big Glowing Advertising Screens, Busy October, and Art
Links for the day
The First Casualty: The Reputation of Linux Developers (and of Linux)
The last thing you can take from a person is pride
Links 17/10/2026: Europe Divorcing US President Putin (Kompromat), MElon and Kapo-berg ("Meta") Buying US Elections Again
Links for the day
GAFAM LLMs Seem to be Causing Veteran, Experienced Linux Developers to Quit, Only to be Replaced With GAFAM Bots and Unaudited Slopfest 'Code'
Better than 'pulling a SCO'?
30 Years of KDE and "Project Banana"
KDE recently turned 30 (many blog posts about it this past week)
Intercontinental Brigading - Part VI - Racism Against Blacks
Systems don't always work as intended
Inevitable Things
"Bitbucket was Inevitable"
Andy's Passing Thoughts on Media Dying, Not Reporting News (Even Critical News About Itself)
No more news
Stallman Was Right About Torvalds
The crowd/audience Linus Torvalds panders to is paid by GAFAM to go attend and dominate (speak at) LF events. They're people whose employer forces them to use slop, it's inorganic.
Links 17/10/2026: "Why Math Dumped OpenAI", US Third Circuit Has Confirmed LLMs and Other Slop Constitute Plagiarism or Copyright Infringement
Links for the day
GPL Was Right (About Hoarding, Now Automated With Plagiarism Blenders)
Some time next year the UK's High Court might listen to arguments related to this
Microsoft Allegedly Asks Many Workers to Leave at the End of This Year (or Get the Boot), It's Called Voluntary Exit Program a.k.a. Voluntary Early Retirement Program (or VEP) Even for People Far Too Young to Retire
"Everyone at Microsoft knows what those acronyms mean."
The Torvalds-led Slopfest as a Reminder to Pursue Software Freedom, Not Plagiarism Endorsed (for Money) by 'Linux' Foundation
What's happening this month moreover proves that he is not in control of important decisions in his project
Why We Never Got Back to IPFS
Practically speaking, we could get back to IPFS any time
Trillions of Dollars in Debt Are Not "Investment", More People Realise This Now
"Investors started offloading shares on Wednesday in response to an X post about the debt load of CoreWeave Inc..."
Red Hat Silent Layoffs: October 1 Bluewashing, Then Leaving IBM Altogether
It's said that weeks from now there will be another "round" (of "RAs")
Gemini Links 16/10/2026: Metrovision, Smartwatches, and Rekindled Love for Geminispace
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 16, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, October 16, 2026
Intercontinental Brigading - Part V - Keeping Linux Under Users' Control, Not Microsoft's (NSA) Control, Leads to Weaponisation of Cops (Killing the Messengers)
Transatlantic lawfare