Go for it Larry!!!
Selling free software is a great business model!!
Muhahahahahaha!!!
Keep in mind Oracle wont be selling 'free' software, they will be offering software stack including the closed source Oracle Database. This in and of itself would take a good long while to hurt RedHat, unless Oracle decides to yank Red Hat as a supported OS. Oracle is one of those things you don't use in a non supported configuration..
Good morning Incorrigible,
I don't really think the idea here is so much to be selling a distribution, but rather to have an in-house distribution that oracle can use as a 'supported' linux stack on which to run oracle.
There are tons of parameters that can be tuned in the kernel, some of which can have positive or negative effects on how an Oracle database might perform.
It's kind of like the way that Oracle implements Apache support today. When you install Oracle Apache, it is their own version, compiled their way, with their own funky file locations (and I do mean really funky file locations). They know how their installer sets up apache to work with their product, and they will support that. Can you use a generic Apache with Oracle? Sure, but don't ask Oracle anything about it if it doesn't work.