[CentOS] Working with the upstream vendor

[Ned Slider]

On 09/07/11 19:09, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
> Digimer wrote:
>> I think there is a business case to be made for CentOS, from the point
>> of view of Red Hat. My experience has been that a lot of
>> people/companies start out on CentOS. After a while, those that succeed
>> and do well eventually want to switch to Red Hat proper. As good as
>> CentOS is, by it's very nature, it will always lag behind RHEL in so far
>> as updates are concerned.
>>
>> Given all this; I think there is an argument for Red Hat wanting to
>> assist CentOS. As we saw with this release, the delay drove people away
>> from EL. I am sure many went to Debian or other non-EL distributions.
>> Each of these defections is another potential future customer lost to
>> Red Hat.
>>
>
> My view is that problem arose when Oracle came into picture. They are
> aggressively steeling Red Hat customers using Rad Hat EL source.
>
> That is very possibly why Red Hat made recompiling EL source much
> harder, which reflected to CentOS team unprepared for such change.
>

That's nonsense.

Red Hat did not (deliberately) make recompiling the RHEL source harder, 
they made accessing specific knowledge base and bug related information 
harder for those who are not customers - a move designed to make it more 
difficult for companies such as Oracle to support RHEL and steal 
customers from Red Hat.

The issues that sometimes make it difficult to recompile occasional RHEL 
packages have always existed and most likely always will. Filing a bug 
normally results in the issue being fixed, whatever it may be. The vast 
majority of packages in RHEL recompile without issue.