Cox said that customers switching to Oracle may benefit from improved support, though for opposite reasons. He argued that Oracle is likely to throw significant resources into optimizing the RHEL kernel to boost the performance of its flagship Oracle Database.

"Even if these tweaks give MySQL or DB2 the same performance boost, I still think Oracle would find it to their advantage," Cox said. Within six to nine months, Unbreakable Linux will effectively "become a new distro" that should prove very attractive to users, especially those running mission-critical Oracle applications, he said.

Richard Zack, president of Pantek, a provider of Linux technical support, warned that customers should wait a year and let Oracle "work out all the kinks" before they consider switching. But he believes that "security will ultimately be improved through Oracle's new offerings."

"Since Oracle is now providing patches and actively looking for ways to improve security in Linux, because of the GPL [General Public License] all these improvements will go back to the community," Zack said. "Additionally, their activities should encourage competition with Red Hat to step up their security improvements and patch cycles."

But Henry said that Oracle's strategy of cloning RHEL, first released in 2000, adds little for users. "One has to question the performance and security implications of running a seven-or-more-year-old OS if one decides to move to Oracle," he said. "Oracle could have perhaps made a better business decision to simply switch their OS to either of the Asian Linux distributions" it is involved in.

Oracle, through a Japanese subsidiary, owns a majority stake in Miracle Linux, which is based on RHEL source code. Oracle also backs Asianux, a Linux distribution that combines Miracle Linux and Red Flag Linux, a popular variant in China.

Newman warned that with Unbreakable Linux, Oracle won't be able to get by releasing patches just once a quarter as it does with its database. He and Cox both also said that Oracle needs to improve its process for ensuring fixes and patches don't inadvertently break something else or create another vulnerability.

"Oracle will have to improve its regression testing," said Cox. "They can't just throw out patches."