"Is Red Hat in trouble?"

More like Oracle is in trouble.
Putting your support eggs in one basket is not an attractive idea.

If we read between the lines and knowing Oracle; I think that Oracle wants to buy red hat but doesn't have the money.

Oracle has the money. Red Hat doesn't have any interest in selling. They've made this clear to a number of prospective purchasers. Heck, they don't even like working with partners. Trying to work a deal with Red Hat usually makes the partner feel like the vendors who go to the little cubicle offices in Little Rock to sell to Wal-Mart. Except Red Hat hasn't yet realized that unlike Wal-Mart, they don't have a lock on their markets. As someone who's been involved with multiple companies who have tried to work with Red Hat, I much respect what they've done for the Linux business world, but I don't see them being around for the long haul.

Why should we get our RH support from Oracle again? Are they gonna be all MS about it and say they'll only support ORCL on RH if we buy contracts for BOTH? I'll be switching DB suppliers So.Fast if that happens. Maybe not /fast/, but it'll mean the beginning of the end of ORCL getting one red cent of mine. I rather trust the smaller gorilla, thanks, especially if it's their product. Is ORCL so short-sighted/arrogant they don't /get/ that?

...although Red Hat does package its own complete distribution of Linux, it doesn't actually sell the OS.

This isn't correct: Redhat Enterprise Linux is the most expensive GNU/Linux version, in all it's variants. Redhat has a free (free beer, free spech) os out there called Fedora. Anyway this Oracle move is quite amazing to me.

Oracle support folks haven't given a very good impression of their Linux knowledge in the past. Either this is set to improve with this new effort (good for all Oracle customers using Linux) or it could mean this plan is going to fail spectacularly (bad for Unbreakable Linux customers).

oracle does not have the money? they considered buying novell :)

what it looks for me is that they want to buy red hat, paying less for it

They can support Debian GNU/Linux without buying anything or asking anyone's permission.

If you run any Oracle you know how long it takes for them to patch their own software.

Oracle has more money than God, as evidenced by their continuing acquisition spree. However, as Larry expressed in recent interviews, buying open source companies that have no IP protection for their products doesn't make business sense because they have no valuable assets.

With this announcement, they get to steal the leading product directly from the leading Linux vendor and package it as part of the application stack they sell. And yes many sites want a single support point for the whole thing.

Joe Daily....Oracle doesn't have the money? As per their last filing, Oracle had $28B in assets and over $8B in cash and marketable securities alone. Sounds like enough cash to me ;-)

But, sure, if Oracle or anyone else wants to buy Red Hat in a little while, this move by Oracle should ensure that Red Hat's market cap is lower.

I've taken a shot at some 'what if' here:

To Marco Ghirlanda

All Redhat software, including their enterprise editions ARE free, in SOURCE form, per the GPL. Binaries that contain RedHat's IP (their tradename and images) can't be redistributed, but the source can. That is how CentOS and WhiteBox Linux make fully compatible versions of Redhats versions of linux, using the free SOURCE to compile their own versions.

This has nothing to do with Fedora, which is a seperate product.