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What's free in Oracle for Linux?

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Ramon F Herrera

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Dec 20, 2003, 5:22:16 PM12/20/03
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I was leafing through an open source database book, where
the author states that Oracle Corp. has made it's
Oracle server "free" for Linux.

I have never seen a straighforward explanation about
this issue? Exactly what is free from Oracle to the
Linux community?

TIA,

-Ramon F. Herrera

DJ

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Dec 20, 2003, 5:46:13 PM12/20/03
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"Ramon F Herrera" <ra...@conexus.net> wrote in message
news:c9bc36ff.03122...@posting.google.com...

Oracle is free to download and use IF you are not using it for commerical
purposes.

It is free to you to play with and learn, but if you start sticjing grannies
recipes in there to store then you are on shaky ground.

It's free on all platforms and licensed based on trust.

A fantastic idea I think


Ramon F Herrera

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Dec 21, 2003, 12:17:46 AM12/21/03
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"DJ" <nospam...@goaway.com> wrote in message news:<Yi4Fb.7348$526....@newsfep4-glfd.server.ntli.net>...

> It's free on all platforms and licensed based on trust.

You are confirming my perceptions. In other words, there
is nothing special about Oracle's treatment of their products
towards the Linux/open source community. Linux and all the other
supported platforms are treated _exactly_ the same.

What about the "GNU/Linux copyleft"? Does it apply to Oracle?
Does it affect Oracle at all? If I need to debug the OCI libraries
under Linux, for instance, can I get the source code?


> Oracle is free to download and use IF you are not using it for commercial
> purposes.
>

That's what they say, but I don't believe it. The Oracle server
images for Linux available at OTN, will NOT install unless I get
a patch from Metalink, and Metalink costs big bucks. Oracle places
an incomplete "free" product in their web server, but in order for
it to run you need a "key" (although they call it "patch").
Am I missing something here?

>
> A fantastic idea I think

The idea is wonderful, but it seems to me that it is just
an idea, not an actual implementation.

-Ramon

KevJohnP

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Dec 21, 2003, 3:49:02 AM12/21/03
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Unpatched 9.2 (and previous versions) have installed fine for me on
Linux a number of times and the majority of distro specific help sites
out there that are all based on the standard OTN download without
requirement for patches to be downloaded from MetaLink.

Production use is another matter, there you would need the patches but
then as mentioned then you need to pay for and license the product.

It would be good if Oracle rolled-up the patches into the downloads, but
when you contrast the fact that we can freely download compared to
competitors we should be thankfull for what we have!

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