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The thing is, it's "purpose-built". It's for customers that are going to be running Oracle software, and want a single point-of-contact for support. People aren't buying it from Oracle for running general purpose apps.

It's a common thing, actually, though Oracle is probably the highest-profile company doing so. Any network appliance with turn-key software is likely running a derivative of RHEL. Less high-profile companies, like Check Point Software, who own the enterprise firewall market, roll their own version of RHEL as a no-cost deployment option for customers, to bypass the price of an official RHEL or Windows license.

RHEL is the choice platform for general purpose application deployment, and you pay a premium to RH for support of that platform. Certainly RH isn't suffering a shortage of customers.

But the nature of their model also encourages the behavior of Oracle et al. If you're going to deploy linux for one specific application, should RH have some sort of linux-monopoly on this market any more than Windows should be entitled to a pay-us-or-else atitude? The customer has the choice of placing their trust in the vendor using a derivative platform, or opting to pay a premium in choosing RH directly. There's nothing wrong with that, and RH has taken no measures to try and prevent this type of activity.

They don't need to, because they have a large enough market of customers that value the support they provide. And by the same token, when companies like Oracle can simply branch RHEL under their own label, it forces RH to ensure they are providing customer value in order to compete. I actually think that's a good thing, and it's the type of thing that ultimately keeps vendors focused on servicing customers.

Robbed of lock-in, a company has no choice but to innovate and service their customers, or face extinction. I don't see it as a bad thing, and I don't think RH has suffered because of it. We just need to re-adjust our perspective for OSS-based business models versus proprietary, because there really is no concept of "theft" in OSS (assuming you abide by the license). It forces companies to invest in providing the best level of support, and I think that is one of the chief benefits of commercial OSS.

Just my 2c...