Hello,
This afternoon I received the new that my institution, in the main direction, is planning (for political reasons, I don't know which one??) migrate to Debian.
I have a hotted conversation with my boss cause I've been working on CentOS during near a year and half. I explained it that both distros just implement the protocols that are standards, that could be installed a web server in a Debian Box or in a CentOS Box, both can use apache and generally the service will be stable in both, without a lot of differences. Also that the use of each one is indifferent, just a matter of user's comfort and that means, it will take a long time to change to other, because not only will be the time in planning services, but the time in learn a new way of do it too.
Note: if I said something wrong correct me please.
The arguments they gave to me were, what happen if redhat close the base packages, they don't have to release them, but just to the buyer, and we can't buy the distro, there are others distros like debian that is totally free, and without dependencies of proprietary industry.
I really struggle a little more to defend, CentOS and my comfort on it ;) , but have not solids arguments about that issue, I really never worried about it.
Would some of you explain me this issue, or point me somewhere to read?. I'll really appreciate that.
The arguments they gave to me were, what happen if redhat close the base packages, they don't have to release them, but just to the buyer, and we can't buy the distro, there are others distros like debian that is totally free, and without dependencies of proprietary industry.
They may want to re-read the GPL and related licenses. 99.9% of the software in RHEL is GPL, which means they can charge for it all they want, but whoever buys it can re-release it as they see fit. Given that RHEL is in the habit of buying things and releasing them to the FOSS community (Netscape Directory anyone?) I don't see them closing anything in the near future. It's not really the software RH is trying to charge people for, so much as it's the support, licensing and reliability that gives bosses the peace of mind they want.
I really struggle a little more to defend, CentOS and my comfort on it ;) , but have not solids arguments about that issue, I really never worried about it.
Would some of you explain me this issue, or point me somewhere to read?. I'll really appreciate that. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
-- Jim Perrin System Architect - UIT Ft Gordon & US Army Signal Center
On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 20:08, Alain Reguera wrote:
The arguments they gave to me were, what happen if redhat close the base packages, they don't have to release them, but just to the buyer, and we can't buy the distro, there are others distros like debian that is totally free, and without dependencies of proprietary industry.
Would some of you explain me this issue, or point me somewhere to read?. I'll really appreciate that.
Redhat has has been fanatical about observing the GPL on upstream packages, applying it to their own their own code and making source available in RPM form even for packages with licenses that don't require it. While it is always good practice to have a 'plan B' to cover the possibility of a preferred product becoming unavailable, there is no reason to expect things to change and not much point in switching to a different version ahead of time.
On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 20:08, Alain Reguera wrote:
The arguments they gave to me were, what happen if redhat close the base packages, they don't have to release them, but just to the buyer, and we can't buy the distro, there are others distros like debian that is totally free, and without dependencies of proprietary industry.
I looked briefly at Debian when RH dropped support for their older products. Things in Debian were different enough to be a fairly significan re-learning experience for me that I did not really want to face the change.
I also found Debian Stable a bit too long in the tooth as far as software packages ... it felt like I was migrating from RHL 7.3 to 6.2.
Thankfully Whitebox appeared about the time I was thinking I really had to make a decision and that worked out quite well and upgrading that to CentOS once it looked like Whitebox was starting to have troubles was easy.
On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 21:44 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
Redhat has has been fanatical about observing the GPL on upstream packages, applying it to their own their own code and making source available in RPM form even for packages with licenses that don't require it. While it is always good practice to have a 'plan B' to cover the possibility of a preferred product becoming unavailable, there is no reason to expect things to change and not much point in switching to a different version ahead of time.
I would agree that with this ... unless you are about to embark on implementing dozens/hundreds of new systems where it may make some sense to switch gears, it does not make sense to switch at this point.
Frankly fedora core and legacy updates would probably be a better fall- back position if you are not interested in a commercial distro and you are used to the way Redhat distros work. I've been satisfied with using Fedora Legacy to keep a couple RHL 7.3 boxes updated that I have not seen the need to upgrade to something else.
If your running Centos 4 FC 3 would be an easier migration than anything else I can think of. The downside is FC 3 is it will never come with newer boot disks to install on the latest hardware (neither will Debian stable) unless you make a custom installer disk. Also FC3 was recently handed off to Legacy and it takes a couple weeks before they have things in place to start pushing out updates.
Regards, Paul Berger
On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 22:09, Paul wrote:
The arguments they gave to me were, what happen if redhat close the base packages, they don't have to release them, but just to the buyer, and we can't buy the distro, there are others distros like debian that is totally free, and without dependencies of proprietary industry.
I looked briefly at Debian when RH dropped support for their older products. Things in Debian were different enough to be a fairly significan re-learning experience for me that I did not really want to face the change.
I also found Debian Stable a bit too long in the tooth as far as software packages ... it felt like I was migrating from RHL 7.3 to 6.2.
Yes, if you are arguing about future availability of Centos, ask the Debian proponent to describe the schedule for planned future Debian releases. I've never been able to understand that myself.
Les Mikesell wrote:
On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 22:09, Paul wrote:
I also found Debian Stable a bit too long in the tooth as far as software packages ... it felt like I was migrating from RHL 7.3 to 6.2.
Yes, if you are arguing about future availability of Centos, ask the Debian proponent to describe the schedule for planned future Debian releases. I've never been able to understand that myself.
And for EOL on security fixes for older versions. I have to admit that I have no idea how long they support these, so their support actually could be quite okay.
Ralph
On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 11:16 +0100, Ralph Angenendt wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 22:09, Paul wrote:
I also found Debian Stable a bit too long in the tooth as far as software packages ... it felt like I was migrating from RHL 7.3 to 6.2.
Yes, if you are arguing about future availability of Centos, ask the Debian proponent to describe the schedule for planned future Debian releases. I've never been able to understand that myself.
They release the new version "When it is ready" :)
And for EOL on security fixes for older versions. I have to admit that I have no idea how long they support these, so their support actually could be quite okay.
There is nothing wrong with debian ... in that they provide a long term and stable distro. Here is their official policy on Woody (the last stable release) and Potato, the one before that: ------------------- Potato was available from August 14th, 2000 until June 30th, 2003. That was < 3 years.
The security team has announced that it will continue to provide security updates for Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (woody) until May 2006 or until security support for etch (the release following sarge) starts. Woody was released on July 19, 2002, that is about 4 years. So the last 2 stable releases were a total of 7 years for Security support.
The RHEL support cycle is 7 years for security updates though, so it is still the available for longer periods. RHEL 2.1 (for example) was released on May 17, 2002 (almost exactly the same time as Woody) ... and it will be supported with security updates until May 31, 2009 (more than 3 years after debain stopped support for Woody). If you were running a critical application that was on a Woody box, you would have to upgrade it twice as often as you would if it were on RHEL 2.1.
Each distro has it's pluses and minuses.
On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 21:08 -0500, Alain Reguera wrote:
Hello,
This afternoon I received the new that my institution, in the main direction, is planning (for political reasons, I don't know which one??) migrate to Debian.
I have a hotted conversation with my boss cause I've been working on CentOS during near a year and half. I explained it that both distros just implement the protocols that are standards, that could be installed a web server in a Debian Box or in a CentOS Box, both can use apache and generally the service will be stable in both, without a lot of differences. Also that the use of each one is indifferent, just a matter of user's comfort and that means, it will take a long time to change to other, because not only will be the time in planning services, but the time in learn a new way of do it too.
Note: if I said something wrong correct me please.
The arguments they gave to me were, what happen if redhat close the base packages, they don't have to release them, but just to the buyer, and we can't buy the distro, there are others distros like debian that is totally free, and without dependencies of proprietary industry.
We would have access to their SRPMS anyway, even if they only released to customers. Several of the CentOS developers are upstream customers and we would have access to the upstream source even if they closed it to all but paying customers. Since their SRPMS are GPL, once we have access we can release RPMS builr on them, so long as we follow the redistribution requirements.
Here is an interview of the RedHat CIO discussing CentOS:
http://cio.co.nz/cio.nsf/UNID/0358EF0F3EFF0584CC2570AA0073523A?OpenDocument
Look for CentOS in this document.
Thanks, Johnny Hughes CentOS Developer
Alain Reguera wrote:
The arguments they gave to me were, what happen if redhat close the base packages, they don't have to release them, but just to the buyer, and we can't buy the distro, there are others distros like debian that is totally free, and without dependencies of proprietary industry.
You might want to keep in mind that Redhat dont actually 'sell' a distro - they sell support services and a subscription to the RHN website / infrastructure.
Of course you can just use it 'cause it rocks....
:-)
Karanbir Singh wrote:
Alain Reguera wrote:
The arguments they gave to me were, what happen if redhat close the base packages, they don't have to release them, but just to the buyer, and we can't buy the distro, there are others distros like debian that is totally free, and without dependencies of proprietary industry.
You might want to keep in mind that Redhat dont actually 'sell' a distro - they sell support services and a subscription to the RHN website / infrastructure.
Hello list,
The arguments they gave to me were, what happen if redhat close the base packages, they don't have to release them, but just to the buyer, and we can't buy the distro, there are others distros like debian that is totally free, and without dependencies of proprietary industry.
To be honest I was anxious about that too. Take a look for a case of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server. Why Novell don't make available SRPMs the way RedHad do?
Regards -- ____________________________________________________________________ D o m i n i k S k ł a d a n o w s k i
On Mon, 2006-01-23 at 14:04 +0100, Dominik Składanowski wrote:
The arguments they gave to me were, what happen if redhat close the base packages, they don't have to release them, but just to the buyer, and we can't buy the distro, there are others distros like debian that is totally free, and without dependencies of proprietary industry.
To be honest I was anxious about that too. Take a look for a case of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server. Why Novell don't make available SRPMs the way RedHad do?
Novell has traditionally been a proprietary solutions provider. They prefer keeping things close to their chest, even if it's a running chainsaw. RH has a tradition of helping out where they can and letting people do what they like.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Even tho many good answers were already provided, thera are a few point I would like to comment on.
On Sun, Jan 22, 2006 at 09:08:25PM -0500, Alain Reguera wrote:
This afternoon I received the new that my institution, in the main direction, is planning (for political reasons, I don't know which one??) migrate to Debian.
Then they are wrong from the state. No company should change the software they run on their computers for political reasons. Technical, yes. Economical, yes. Commercial, yes. Strategic, yes. But not political.
I have a hotted conversation with my boss cause I've been working on CentOS during near a year and half. I explained it that both distros just implement the protocols that are standards, that could be installed a web server in a Debian Box or in a CentOS Box, both can use apache and generally the service will be stable in both, without a lot of differences.
That is, at best, wishful thinking.
I have to seriously question Debian's stability on an enterprise environment. You will see some serious version changes on updates (not common, but they do happen), and some less-than-stable versions on the distribution.
RHEL (as CentOS) is not a bleeding-edge distribution. Actually, some software are so old that if you are will have trouble if you are migrating from another distribution. As an example, I would like to point out that Mutt on CentOS 4 is older than the one we had on Conectiva Linux 9 (old, old). On the other hand, with RHEL (and CentOS) you will have a rocksolid server, something I never saw with any other distribution I had the (dis)pleasure of working with. To name a few: RedHat Linux (pre-enterprise), Mandrake, Mandriva, SuSE, Conectiva, Slackware and Debian.
The overall maintenance cost for a CentOS box is about 60% of what I had with other distributions (85% compared to SuSE Enterprise). I'm talking about technical personal time here.
Also that the use of each one is indifferent, just a matter of user's comfort and that means, it will take a long time to change to other, because not only will be the time in planning services, but the time in learn a new way of do it too.
I can put a figure on that time. Namely, 3 to 6 months (depending on how well documented your procedures are). Also, it is far from indifferent, as I pointed earlier.
Note: if I said something wrong correct me please.
I hope what I wrote above helped :)
The arguments they gave to me were, what happen if redhat close the base packages, they don't have to release them, but just to the buyer, and we can't buy the distro, there are others distros like debian that is totally free, and without dependencies of proprietary industry.
Already answered by other in a far better way than I could do myself.
I really struggle a little more to defend, CentOS and my comfort on it ;) , but have not solids arguments about that issue, I really never worried about it.
Would some of you explain me this issue, or point me somewhere to read?. I'll really appreciate that.
I went to a distribution change a some months ago. Since we are a consulting company, I had to think not only about my company, but also my clients. That triggered the change was the fact that Mandrake Software bought Conectiva (Conectiva Linux was our distro of choice).
Yes, we had a choice of starting to use Mandriva, but since it was a change on itself, we decided to do a full analysis of the avaliable distros to see which one was a better choice.
The first question one has to ask is the focus of the distribution. On that, the first two we rulled out were Slackware and Debian. Slackware is a hackers/learning focused distro, and Debian is a politicaly focused distro. Fedora is a bleeding-edge distro, so it was also ruled out, along with many others. Truthfuly, just by applying this first filter (distro focus), we were able to disqualify about 70 distros. That is a filter I recomend anyone to apply when choosing what you will put on your company servers.
I have changed distros before that. One thing I learned is that choosing the correct distro will be much more cost effective, even if you have to change it after 6 or 7 years, than sticking to a distro for the wrong reasons (ie: non-business related).
Best Regards,
- -- Rodrigo Barbosa rodrigob@suespammers.org "Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur" "Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)
On 1/23/06, Rodrigo Barbosa rodrigob@suespammers.org wrote:
I hope what I wrote above helped :)
You can be totally sure of that. You gave us a very detailed info.
All the suggestions had been very solid. I'm very thanked.
-
Alain Reguera -
Dominik Składanowski -
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams -
Jim Perrin -
Johnny Hughes -
Karanbir Singh -
Les Mikesell -
Paul -
Peter Farrow -
Ralph Angenendt -
Rodrigo Barbosa