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Why Redhat could be in trouble

The recent announcement by Oracle to provide Linux support, should be alarming for Redhat. Redhat makes its living from providing support services for its Linux distributions. But the announcement certainly was not unexpected. The countdown to Oracles entry into Linux was started with the purchase of JBoss by Redhat earlier this year. The acquisition put Redhat into direct competition with Oracle and IBM, precisely it put Redhat's JBoss into competition with Oracle's Fusion Middleware. Since Linux support is Redhat's lifeline it only made sense to attack Redhat by cutting off its lifeline, weaken the company so that it is in a weaker position to compete with Oracle in other domains such as middleware stack. However Redhat is not going anywhere soon, they have immense credibility, and expertise to provide support and patches for their Linux products, Oracle has yet to prove itself in this domain. Oracle has deep pockets and can establish itself in this domain relatively quickly.

In general the move by Oracle will be good for Linux. It could fuel adoption of Linux/Open Source by enterprises and companies, because Oracle one of the largest software companies, and has immense reputation and credibility with large corporations. I have earlier mentioned in this blog, that a one of the impediments to Linux adoption is the lack of support. Oracle being a global company, hopefully will fill the vacuum and fuel Linux adoption internationally. Eventually the user base will increase so much that new competition will be born, and more companies will be able to get a piece of the larger pie.