The database heavyweight announced that it would provide technical support to customers who are using open-source software from UnitedLinux, a consortium of second-tier Linux companies.

Oracle said it plans to work with UnitedLinux to identify technical-support problems and streamline the process of addressing those issues. It will service customers who have a support contract for Oracle products and who maintain an operating system support contract with any of the UnitedLinux members.

The alliance also bolstered Oracle's push to bring Linux to the enterprise.

UnitedLinux is a four-company consortium made up of SuSE, the SCO Group, Turbolinux and Conectiva, which teamed up to present a single front against Red Hat's dominance in the industry.

Thursday's announcement is not necessarily a blow to Red Hat, "but it is absolutely another sign of continuing momentum from UnitedLinux," said Stephen O'Grady, an analyst at RedMonk. "From the introduction of its developers' toolkit to the latest announcement for Oracle support, UnitedLinux is becoming more of an enterprise-ready platform, and as such certainly does represent a clear and present danger to Red Hat."

The companies said that corporate customers will benefit from the joint engineering efforts as Oracle and UnitedLinux collaborate to integrate required fixes and patches in future maintenance releases of UnitedLinux.

Under the partnership announced at the CeBit trade show in Germany, Oracle will provide "level 3" support for its customers--the deepest level, meaning that it takes responsibility for the entire software package and doesn't have to refer any calls to Linux partners, said Dave Dargo, vice president of Oracle's Linux Program Office...

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En resumidas y para los k no entiendan el ingles, el articulo dice k Oracle proveera servicio tecnico a todo aquel k tenga contratado uno de sus productos/servicios y con cualkiera de los miembros de UnitedLinux ( se entiende por la union de Suse, Sco Group, Turbolinux y Conectiva, kienes se unieron para evitar el dominio de mercado de Red Hat). Explica k Oracle ofrecera un servicio a sus clientes de nivel 3: toma responsabilidad sobre la totalidad de los paquetes de software sin tener k contactar a cualkiera de los miembros Linux...

En fin, este articulo no interesara a todos asi k cualkier pregunta de traduccion, avisenme...