[CLUE-Tech] Re: [CLUE-Talk] Upcoming Oracle presentations question

[Collins Richey]

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 05:46:23 -0700
Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com> wrote:

> On Feb 29, 2004, at 11:10 PM, Keith Hellman wrote:
> > My understanding is that is can't be in stable.  Oracle could
> > certainly support a 'non-free' package (at least I think that's the
> > one).  See #5 of the Debian social contract
> > (http://www.debian.org/social_contract)
> 
> Hard to say, but I wouldn't count on non-free always being available. 
> 
> A fairly good-sized contingent of Debian developers no longer think 
> it's appropriate to support it.  Others have argued that by removing 
> it, Debian would be breaking their own published social contract with 
> their users.  It's been one of the heated debates on debian-devel and 
> debian-vote this year.
> 
> The fact that one cannot run Oracle on Debian Linux (or derivatives) 
> and expect official support from Oracle on that platform choice, is
> the issue I'd like to see Oracle address.
> 
> Obviously a number of people *do* run Oracle on Debian -- Google 
> reveals a number of hints and tips -- but those users and sysadmins
> end up having to accept that they're not "officially supported", which
> is silly.  Linux is Linux.  And the differences between Debian and
> other Linux distros is far less than some of the less-popular
> "specialized" distros. 
> 
> Debian is a mainstream Linux distribution and deserves recognition as 
> such by Oracle.  That's where I'm headed here... that and wondering 
> aloud why they choose not to support it.
> 

I don't really have a dog in this hunt, being neither a debian nor an
oracle supporter, but a real possibility is this.  True debian
supporters in their hearts and in their social contract believe that
their is no reason for a product like oracle to be permitted to exist
(it's non-free, closed source, and simply evil).  Maybe this is simply
payback on the part of oracle?

Of course, there are many debian users who don't subscribe to the social
contract crap but merely use the distro because they like what it
provides.  Oracle is leaving those folks in the lurch.


-- 
Collins Richey - Denver area
gentoo testing 2.6.3-rc2 nptl udev