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Oracle Linux Adopters Suffer Backlash
atbarboz writes "One of the first converts to Oracle's support for Linux said it has endured a public backlash since its decision to drop Red Hat. 'Melbourne company Opes Prime Stockbroking told ZDNet Australia that in the weeks following its announcement to adopt Oracle Linux, upset Linux enthusiasts phoned, e-mailed and wrote about the company online to complain at the decision. "People called us out of the blue to tell us we were idiots," said Opes executive director Anthony Blumberg.'"
Users who call up a company they have no relation to in order to tell them their tech decisions are bad are complete morons. Linux is an OS, not a religion. If a company wants to run Oracle Linux, Red Hat, BeOS, Windows ME, or Mac OS 7 is completely their choice to make.
It's idiocy like this that gives any advocacy a bad name.
Look, guys, going around irritating users by calling them idiots, who are really our customers and should be treated as such (whether commercial users or not) is the kind of thing that makes the Linux community look like a bunch of elitist snobs who shout things like 'RTFA' at every question.
Want to know one of the main stumbling blocks to further widespread adoption of Linux? If you're one of the people calling Opes a bunch of idiots, look in the mirror.
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Another aspect I don't get in all of this is the preference for Red Hat over Oracle. Red Hat is a great company that has contributed a lot to Linux, but to be fair, they are also a company that does not provide free access to downloads of their signature product (which is why we have CentOS), and a company the CEO of which once stated that Windows was a superior alternative to Linux for desktop users (admittedly a few years ago). Oracle, on the other hand, makes Unbreakable Linux freely availible to anyone who wants to download it, and additionally, also gave a major boost to Linux when it started supporting Linux as a platform in the late 1990s.
To be clear, though, I am not saying that Oracle has a better record than Red Hat, rather, that the two have both made contributions to the Linux community, and for a large number of people to attack a company for using Unbreakable Linux as opposed to RHEL is, in my opinion, retarded.
What on Earth does anyone think contacting some organisation (that they probably have no contact with in day to day life) to tell them that they're idiots is going to achieve? More to the point, if it's not a public sector organisation and the people calling aren't shareholders, what the hell business is it of theirs?
A common selling point of open source is "if you don't like the support, you have the freedom to go elsewhere". Reading between the lines of the article, it seems like Opes have done just that. So as soon as someone decides they don't like the support and they want to go elsewhere, this is what they get? One thing I'm sure of, it certainly isn't going to encourage anyone to adopt Red Hat.
I bet the reaction would be totally different if they moved to Oracle Linux from some other commercial Unix.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
This way of thinking annoys me. It's possible to not believe in something without having any evidence. For example, if I told you that there was an alabaster dildo slowly orbiting our solar system out in the Oort cloud, it would be impossible for you to prove otherwise, given that we lack the necessary technology to zero in on an object that small and that far away. However, it would be reasonable for you to not believe me. I think you can agree that your refusal to believe in the alabaster dildo does not constitute a religion, even though you are technically believing something without having any irrefutable evidence for that belief.
To take this one step further: what if, sometime in the future, our technology improved to the point where we could test the alabaster dildo hypothesis, and, lo and behold, there was in fact a dildo out there floating in the Oort cloud. Would you continue to insist that the dildo did not exist? No. You'd probably be surprised, but you'd just revise your position, probably, and start wondering how on earth that dildo got out there in the first place. This is the fundamental difference between a religious belief and a belief.
I have no doubt that some atheists would in fact continue to deny the existence of God, even if real, hard, scientific evidence for his existence could be demonstrated. But my guess is, those "religious" atheists are a small minority. Most would probably be genuinely surprised, and would probably change their minds on the spot. They're just not holding their breath.
Not believing in something that you feel to be unlikely is not the same as unwavering religious belief. Hell, there are lots of religious people that discount scientifically testable findings simply because they contradict what some old shepherd dudes wrote a couple of millenia ago. This is an example of unwavering religious belief. Even in light of evidence to the contrary, their self-delusion persists.