On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 9:53 AM, Johnny Hughes johnny@centos.org wrote:
The bottom line ... Robert is correct, the relationship is certainly symbiotic and not parasitic. Red Hat (the company) needs to make money, and software that is built on the same code base is available for free as well. It is a win-win ... which is exactly what the GPL provides for.
Red Hat is clearly aware that they would never have become a popular distribution in the first place without their own freely redistributable release. My question is why they now think it is better to not provide that directly - and get the brand recognition, community input, and potential support customers using the exact code as they will as paying customers. Why push them to work-alikes with different branding where many users won't even understand the relationship, with the obvious danger that another brand may compete for paid support?