Third-party experts tend to agree -- despite Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's vow to the contrary -- that the source code for Oracle's 'Unbreakable Linux' will likely fork significantly from Red Hat Enterprise Linux over time.

"Effectively, Oracle is creating a separate Linux distribution by assuming responsibility for Red Hat software after it has reached end of life," said Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at Secure Computing Corp., a San Jose-based vendor of security software.

And while some experts think Oracle would have done better by creating an entirely new version of Linux -- as was rumored -- most believe Red Hat's assessment of potential problems is exaggerated.

"I honestly don't see it creating a huge security problem," said Aaron Newman, chief technology officer at Application Security Inc., a New York-based security consulting firm. "Oracle may have issues with their database patches. But I don't see a lot of serious security holes in Linux: It's open-source, so everyone sees the code."

"If Oracle decides to be a team player, I see nothing but good coming from this," said Phil Cox, a principal consultant at System Experts Corp., a security consultancy in Sudbury, Mass. "But if they decide to port everything and keep patches to themselves, meaning the only way you could get them is through an Oracle support contract, it could cause a significant problem."