New subject: CentOS proviiding additional services > was Setting up Tomcat

29 Oct 2005


      This thread (... Tomcat ...) emphasizes the essential conundrom of
CentOS whose mission is to provide a community-based, well-maintained
and freely distributable version of the stable enterprise software
from the Well Known North American VENDOR (WKNAV). There is a
essential gap betweenthe community (I want lots of current packages)
and the WKNAV base (you get what I choose to provide). As CentOS
becomes more popular and reaches more desktop and server users, the
gap becomes more evident. And there is also the ever present clamor
for software that is not freely distributable due to licensing
considerations.
What I would recommend to assist those who love the CentOS stable base
but want more than CentOS can (legally or otherwise) provide is to
follow the documentation approach taken by Ubuntu. Ubuntu is based on
the Well Known GNU/Linux Provider (KKGLP) but goes well beyond what
the WKGLP chooses to privide. The community of Ubuntu has provided a
single document with brief HOWTOs and website references for a lot of
commonly needed services that are not provided by Ubuntu or the WKGLP.
Granted this document (based on Ubuntu 5.04) but not really updated
for Ubunto 5.10) is rapidly aging, but it is an example of what could
be a very valuable service. Ubunto also provides a well-organized list
of HOWTOs on its forums. This is the place for services like Tomcat
which have non-redistributable components. It's perfectly legal to
provide concise, up-to-date HOWTOs for software that cannot be
redistributed.
Perhaps someone (or a group of someones) would like to take on
organizing such a compendium of instructions on the CentOS Forum and
keeping the compendium up to date? Think how many hours of googling
and searching mail archives and copious RTFM could be saved! Instead
of firing off a mail to this list, you could first look in a well
known place on the Forum and avoid recasting a round object.
I'm not in a position to undertake such an endeavor. I keep current
with CentOS, and I want to see CentOS thrive, but I have only a
peripheral interest in CentOS, and that peripheral interst is a work
connection. My employer, like many others, prefers to have a
contractural arrangement (who can I kick around if it breaks even
though it never breaks?) and to pay big bucks to the WKNAV for that
privilege. CentOS is the closest thing I can get for my home system
without paying the WKNAV, and this I will not do.
Some food for thought.
--
Collins Richey
      Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code ... If you write
      the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not
      smart enough to debug it.
             -Brian Kernighan