Red Hat hits back at Ellison

Red Hat has published a blog post in defence of its business model after being the target of an extraordinary attack by Oracle chief Larry Ellison at Oracle OpenWorld this week.

Ellison criticised Red Hat whilst justifying Oracle's decision to release its own Linux kernel, claiming that the enterprise Linux vendor was too slow to update its distribution for industry partners.

Without naming Ellison nor Oracle, Red Hat's blog posted today said competitors wanted to "draw from [Linux's] success" whilst seeking to "selectively open their offerings while seeking to lock in their customers."

Red Hat said it offered technology updates and upgrades to customers "every six months on average" - ensuring the release was tested and quality assured to guarantee stability.

The company also defended the security of its code, arguing that over 98 percent of security fixes in its latest release were being delivered within one calendar day of being identified.

On the subject of performance, Red Hat said its goal was to have Red Hat Enterprise Linux "deliver out of the box performance for multiple workloads and servers, not just one or two configurations.

"Our commitment is deep and lasting, not fireworks and hyperbole followed by a huge invoice and vendor lock-in," the company said.