Oracle undersells Red Hat for Linux support

Capping rumors that it would enter the Linux business, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison used his Oct. 2006 OpenWorld keynote to announce support of Red Hat Linux at a cheaper price. The program, called Unbreakable Linux, offers several levels of support, from $99 for basic access to software updates to 24/7 enterprise support for $1,999. That's $500 less than Red Hat's highest 24/7 offering. Oracle will take Red Hat distributions, remove the branding, and add its own bug fixes. It also will indemnify customers against intellectual property claims from SCO Group, currently in litigation with IBM over misappropriation of UNIX code into Linux.

Under the Oracle program, bug fixes will be made to current, future, and back releases so customers won't have to upgrade to get the fix. To be clear, the Red Hat Network does fix bugs fairly quickly, and if customers pay for normal support, they get ready access to the next version anyway.

Ellison's announcement came in the wake of rumors that the vendor would buy the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ubuntu is a free, open source, Linux-based operating system.