[CentOS] Red Hat CEO: Go Ahead, Copy Our Software

[Andrew Wyatt]

On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 7:13 AM, Reindl Harald <h.reindl at thelounge.net>wrote:

>
>
> Am 16.08.2013 14:07, schrieb Andrew Wyatt:
> > On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 6:45 AM, Giles Coochey <giles at coochey.net>
> wrote:
> >>>  While I agree that CentOS will always have support while it is
> community
> >> driven, and has an upstream - without RedHat, no Centos... the truth of
> the
> >> matter (when it comes to $$$):
> >>
> >
> > It wouldn't be impossible to continue CentOS without RedHat, the
> community
> > would be capable of pushing it forward. That's not to say that RedHat
> > isn't doing a great job, but if they were to stop the CentOS project
> could
> > and probably would go on IMHO.
>
> it would be impossible
>
> rebuild mostly srpms and do the development are completly different worlds
> it would be a *complete* different distribution, the current userbase
> is not interested in community developed distribution, if they would
> than the would not use CentOS - period
>
>
RedHat Linux is largely a community distribution, it is a collection of
upstream community sources with RedHat developers and engineers assigned as
package maintainers.  Their product is support and not software.

I think we all know that rebuilding SRPMS and development are different
worlds but that doesn't mean that the community wouldn't come together to
continue moving it forward.  I know I'd try to help...  The biggest
challenge would be in developing the next major iteration but for a product
already deep into its cycle like CentOS 6 it wouldn't be very difficult at
all.

It may shed a number of CentOS users on the front end, but a large number
of them would come back.