Oracle Just Bought Out Ksplice

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Oracle Just Bought Out Ksplice

Oracle's latest acquisition is that of Ksplice Inc, the company behind the software to apply updates to the Linux kernel in real-time without requiring a system reboot or other downtime. "Never Reboot Linux For Security Updates," as Ksplice says...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTY5Mg

[oliw]

I hope they don't kill off the product for non-Oracle users.

Actually, if they do, perhaps somebody will compete with them. Maybe distributions could provide similar kernel updates, assuming (foolishly, I'm sure) the tech isn't patent-encrusted...

[GreatEmerald]

Well, at least on the bright side you could say that companies as big as Oracle at least care about Linux enough to do such things.

[oliw]

Well, at least on the bright side you could say that companies as big as Oracle at least care about Linux enough to do such things.

Unless they gobble the tech up and only make it available to their customers.

[nzjrs]

Unless they gobble the tech up and only make it available to their customers.

I do not see the contradiction sorry.

[89c51]

I hope they don't kill off the product for non-Oracle users.

Actually, if they do, perhaps somebody will compete with them. Maybe distributions could provide similar kernel updates, assuming (foolishly, I'm sure) the tech isn't patent-encrusted...

how can they kill something thats open source ???

[FunkyRider]

In fact they does stop supporting to all non-Oracle(r) Linux dists.

They did kill OpenOffice you remember?

[elanthis]

I've always thought KSplice was foolhardy and just outright stupid. It only works given a very long list of stipulations on what exactly the patch does. It's not much different than edit-and-continue debugging, which is borderline useless. If you want to patch a security hole like "this should've been adding -2 to the buffer offset but was only adding -1" then it works. If you need to actually make any kind of even trivial change to data structures, layout, entry points, etc., then it doesn't do anything. And quite a few security holes even are due to larger oversights in the design and not just a simple off-by-one error or inverted condition.

[AnonymousCoward]

I hope they don't kill off the product for non-Oracle users.

Actually, if they do, perhaps somebody will compete with them. Maybe distributions could provide similar kernel updates, assuming (foolishly, I'm sure) the tech isn't patent-encrusted...

http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/ksplice-inc/

[deanjo]

how can they kill something thats open source ???

It isn't that hard to do especially if your outside contributions are few and can easily be weeded out and replaced. Replace that outside code, change license, and continue development under that new license and only release as a blob because that new license allows it. At that point all a person can do is fork the original open source code that was under a open source license. All new development doesn't have to be shared after that except on the fork. Also, even if the source was open source it doesn't mean that the patents covering that source are free to use.