Most of the value in question is in the information about the patches, and not the patches themselves. The explanation from Red Hat makes it clear they'll be closing up quite a bit of their back and forth discussions with customers about the bugs they fix and such (which I have a bit more of a problem with, actually; if a bug tracker isn't open to everyone, it's value decreases remarkably, including to the paying customers who are using it).
Oracle can certainly deal with it. Many problems are solvable with sufficient money. I just think Red Hat is trying to make it more expensive for Oracle to rebuild/rebrand RHEL while still remaining dedicated to supporting the upstream. I don't know if this is the best way to achieve that end. But, I have a great deal of mistrust for Oracle, while I feel pretty good about Red Hat. Oracle's handling of MySQL is not making me feel better about them, either, while we're on the subject.
(which I have a bit more of a problem with, actually; if a bug tracker isn't open to everyone, it's value decreases remarkably, including to the paying customers who are using it).
It helps RedHat focus on the bugs their customers care about -vs- bugs non-customers care about.
Oracle can certainly deal with it. Many problems are solvable with sufficient money. I just think Red Hat is trying to make it more expensive for Oracle to rebuild/rebrand RHEL while still remaining dedicated to supporting the upstream. I don't know if this is the best way to achieve that end. But, I have a great deal of mistrust for Oracle, while I feel pretty good about Red Hat. Oracle's handling of MySQL is not making me feel better about them, either, while we're on the subject.