Oracle is taking on Red Hat in an effort to boost Linux adoption. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison unveiled an enhanced “Unbreakable Linux” service during his keynote at the Oracle OpenWorld user conference, effectively establishing a price and service war with Red Hat for its distribution of Linux. Based on Oracle’s service structure for its own database, Oracle now offers support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and new Oracle derivatives of Red Hat Linux.

All Red Hat customers can choose whether they wish to use Oracle or Red Hat’s support services. Thanks to the peculiarities of the open source licensing of Linux, Oracle can procure Red Hat’s distribution and source code without Red Hat’s permission. With this distribution and access to the Linux Open Source project, Oracle believes it can match or beat Red Hat’s support of the Red Hat distribution.

In addition, Oracle plans to offer its own version of Red Hat Linux. To create its derivative, Oracle takes Red Hat’s Linux distribution, replaces minor trademarked components, applies patches, and recompiles and distributes it as an Oracle version of Linux. Thanks again to the open source licensing, Oracle believes this is legal, despite Red Hat being an unwilling participant.

Oracle plans to provide its recompiled Linux binaries for free, undercut Red Hat’s price, charge less for basic support, and offer a new, higher level of support that provides legal indemnity and patch services superior to those offered by Red Hat. Indemnity protection is particularly interesting for corporate customers of Linux because SCO Unix, holder of some of the original Unix patents, has filed some high-profile suits seeking licensing fees and damages from Linux users and contributors.

Mr. Ellison cited the improved patch services as a major benefit for enterprise customers. Traditionally Red Hat and other Linux distributors have made fixes to the most current release of Linux, but didn’t apply those fixes to prior releases. As a result, customers running earlier versions of Linux were forced to upgrade to the most current release in order to take advantages of the latest fixes. As part of its highest level of service, Oracle plans to “backport” fixes to prior releases of Linux, allowing customers to upgrade Linux on their own schedules, yet still take advantage of fixes as they are made available.

Oracle turns up the competitive heat

Oracle’s stated motivations for introducing this broader set of Linux support and competing head on with Red Hat is to quell the fears of large enterprises about adopting the open source system, which has found use in pockets of many companies, but not widespread use for enterprise applications and vital systems. The unspoken competitor here is Microsoft, whose presence in enterprise accounts is a threat to Oracle’s database and middleware technology.

Ironically, some also fear that Oracle’s move could kill the Linux support market altogether. “We are trying to speed adoption of Linux,” Ellison told the keynote audience. “We don’t want to kill Red Hat. We expect Red Hat to compete aggressively. This is capitalism. We’re competing.”

But Red Hat’s competitive responses seem to be limited. Red Hat does not own the code it distributes, and is bound by the open source licensing of the Linux project. Oracle’s legal corps has likely put the new offerings on a strong legal footing.

Red Hat can and should emphasize the strengths of its support capabilities and consider matching Oracle’s patch services. It has a head start and a good track record in supporting customers, but it now has a well-healed and well-connected competitor.