Oracle has signed marketing and technology partnerships with four Linux resellers and application developers -- Red Hat Software, VA Research in the US, Pacific HiTech in Japan, and US/European operation SuSE. "The response to our recent decision to support Linux [in the forthcoming Oracle 8] was a collective sigh of relief from developers worldwide who are looking for a low-cost alternative to Windows NT," Mark Jarvis, Oracle's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, told the US media. "With such obvious momentum behind our upcoming Linux database, we decided to go even further and commit significant resources to the existing developer infrastructure where Red Hat, VA Research, Pacific HiTech, and SuSE are already playing such a vital part." Oracle has not yet made clear exactly what the partnerships entail, but it's not hard to imagine it would involve funding to promote Linux more aggressively to corporate users. Linux, a free OS based on Unix, now has some seven million users worldwide. Claimed to be the fastest growing Unix platform, it has won many converts from proprietary versions of Unix, Windows NT and MacOS. Oracle 8 for Linux is set to ship at the end of the year. ®