http://www.businessinsider.com/red-hat-ceo-go-ahead-copy-our-software-2013-8
Title says is all. Nice to know RH understands and accepts the relationship between CentOS and RHEL.
Although it is complex. After all, if too many choose CentOS, there may no longer be a CentOS. However, I don't think I would refer to CentOS as a "parasite" as the author Matt Asay does. More appropriate to call it symbiotic.
Is the relationship a 50/50 affair? Not sure.
Complicating matters even more is Oracle Unmistakable Linux.
Robert Arkiletian wrote:
http://www.businessinsider.com/red-hat-ceo-go-ahead-copy-our-software-2013-8
Title says is all. Nice to know RH understands and accepts the relationship between CentOS and RHEL.
Although it is complex. After all, if too many choose CentOS, there may no longer be a CentOS. However, I don't think I would refer to CentOS as a "parasite" as the author Matt Asay does. More appropriate to call it symbiotic.
Is the relationship a 50/50 affair? Not sure.
Complicating matters even more is Oracle Unmistakable Linux.
Yeah, and the author *really* doesn't understand, and didn't bother to try, to do their research.
Excerpt: Arguably one critical area that CentOS hasn't helped Red Hat is with developers. While developers want the latest and greatest technology, Red Hat's bread-and-butter audience over the years has been operations departments, which want stable and predictable software. (Read: boring.) CentOS, by cloning RHEL's slow-and-steady approach to Linux development, is ill-suited to attracting developers. --- end excerpt ---
As I said....
mark
On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 3:20 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Yeah, and the author *really* doesn't understand, and didn't bother to try, to do their research.
Excerpt: Arguably one critical area that CentOS hasn't helped Red Hat is with developers. While developers want the latest and greatest technology, Red Hat's bread-and-butter audience over the years has been operations departments, which want stable and predictable software. (Read: boring.) CentOS, by cloning RHEL's slow-and-steady approach to Linux development, is ill-suited to attracting developers. --- end excerpt ---
How about the real history, where Red Hat took a bunch of software developed by others, published the barely-working stuff with horrible bugs (read the changelogs if you disagree....), then accepted contributed debugging, fixes and improvements from the users until it was good enough to charge for, then they cut off access even to the people who had helped make it usable. And CentOS helps fix that problem.
I have no problems with RedHat and have used CEntOS steadily for quite some time now. Even though it's at home on my personal machines, I have been aching for my company to adopt an open source alternative to the five or six Windows 2008 servers that are currently in place...and I've made progess! So MUCH progress that in another month I'm to have a "sit-down" with the higher-ups from Accounting...IT...and "Corporate" to determine if my suggestion warrants merit, and if so....how to go about implementing it....when I finally do get my chance "on the mike" so to speak?...I'll be recommending both Red Hat AND CEntOS.....as they're basically the same thing...and the things I won't be able to troubleshoot myself...I'll have the RedHat Tech Support handle. Either way I see it as a win-win situation. The author might have flubbed a few things...as others have stated, CEntOS...isn't a "parasite" to RedHat....but more a "sibling". And RedHat really DOESN'T own any of the source code it sells! but hey...everyone makes mistakes!......LoL! I will say this: I have used Windows since the Win '95 era, and even though they have come a long way, I have not enjoyed using my computers as much as when I installed Linux, and not just CEntOS....but Fedora...Ubuntu....openSuSE......Debian....etc. I wish there was a way to "return' the favor to al lthe developers and contributors to the Open Source movement....!
Cheers!
EGO II
On 08/15/2013 04:59 PM, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 3:20 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
Yeah, and the author *really* doesn't understand, and didn't bother to try, to do their research.
Excerpt: Arguably one critical area that CentOS hasn't helped Red Hat is with developers. While developers want the latest and greatest technology, Red Hat's bread-and-butter audience over the years has been operations departments, which want stable and predictable software. (Read: boring.) CentOS, by cloning RHEL's slow-and-steady approach to Linux development, is ill-suited to attracting developers. --- end excerpt ---
How about the real history, where Red Hat took a bunch of software developed by others, published the barely-working stuff with horrible bugs (read the changelogs if you disagree....), then accepted contributed debugging, fixes and improvements from the users until it was good enough to charge for, then they cut off access even to the people who had helped make it usable. And CentOS helps fix that problem.
On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 2:28 PM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
On 8/15/2013 2:22 PM, Eddie G. O'Connor Jr. wrote:
And RedHat really DOESN'T own any of the source code it sells!
redhat doesn't sell the source code. they sell their support services and infrastructure.
I agree completely, but the way that they've handled the devtoolset just seems a bit odd. It's definitely a VERY nice to have an updated toolchain available, but why is a separate product? It is available for install with CentOS ( http://people.centos.org/tru/devtools-1.1/ ) but the issue is that there's no clear way to use the compilers in the devtoolset with the EPEL and that's VERY unfortunate in my opinion.
On 08/15/2013 03:12 PM, Robert Arkiletian wrote:
http://www.businessinsider.com/red-hat-ceo-go-ahead-copy-our-software-2013-8
Title says is all. Nice to know RH understands and accepts the relationship between CentOS and RHEL.C
Although it is complex. After all, if too many choose CentOS, there may no longer be a CentOS. However, I don't think I would refer to CentOS as a "parasite" as the author Matt Asay does. More appropriate to call it symbiotic.
Is the relationship a 50/50 affair? Not sure.
Complicating matters even more is Oracle Unmistakable Linux.
I think that Red Hat understands the benefit that they get from CentOS, as expressed by Mr, Whitehurst's statement:
"CentOS is one of the reasons that the RHEL ecosystem is the default. It helps to give us an ubiquity that RHEL might otherwise not have if we forced everyone to pay to use Linux. So, in a micro sense we lose some revenue, but in a broader sense, CentOS plays a very valuable role in helping to make Red Hat the de facto Linux."
Its obvious the benefit that CentOS gets from Red Hat (without those sources, publicly released, CentOS would be extremely hard ... almost impossible). SUSE does not release their enterprise sources and there is no SLES clone because of it.
We do want people to use CentOS for everything they feel comfortable using it for (obviously), but we also would recommend that people use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for things where they want a service level agreements or the specific certifications (Like Common Criteria EAL, etc.) that Red Hat has spent tons of money and effort to get. We would also recommend the Red Hat training and certification program for people who want to get career training that is applicable to CentOS.
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.
Snip...
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.
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
+1
On 08/16/2013 10:58 AM, Tom Bishop wrote:
Snip...
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.
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
+1
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Well said! I agree 100%!!
EGO II
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?
On 08/16/2013 10:16 AM, Les Mikesell wrote:
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?
If you are asking for an opinion, I actually agree that they (Red Hat) should also give it away for free. However, nothing requires them to do so. Since they didn't, CentOS was created and fills that niche.
Again, they need to make money and because of that, they decided not to distribute the binaries for free. That is a valid business decision. Its not the only decision that could be made and it might not be the correct one, but its the one they made.
While the code base the RPMs are built from is the same, but the built binary software is NOT exactly the same. Red Hat can argue that therefore CentOS (or Scientific Linux, or Oracle Linux) is similar but not the same and if you want the real software .. OR .. if you want SLA support, then you should buy access from RHN. AND, they can also say, if you don't want to buy anything and that is your final decision, there is something that is similar you can use and if you ever need support then you can move to RHEL. As their CEO said, SUSE can not do that.
Johnny Hughes wrote:
If you are asking for an opinion, I actually agree that they (Red Hat) should also give it away for free. However, nothing requires them to do so. Since they didn't, CentOS was created and fills that niche.
Hmm. In my opinion, Red Hat is doing the right thing. I learned long ago that customers fall into a quadrant of being high profit or low profit and low maintenance or high maintenance. It's always a good decision to drop the low profit and high maintenance customers.
By doing this, Red Hat keeps a good reputation since it can avoid dealing with users who are most likely to have a bad experience due to unrealistic expectations.
I'm just glad that they do provide the source code and that the folks behind CentOS do everything that they do!
c
On 08/16/2013 12:18 PM, Carl T. Miller wrote:
Johnny Hughes wrote:
If you are asking for an opinion, I actually agree that they (Red Hat) should also give it away for free. However, nothing requires them to do so. Since they didn't, CentOS was created and fills that niche.
Hmm. In my opinion, Red Hat is doing the right thing. I learned long ago that customers fall into a quadrant of being high profit or low profit and low maintenance or high maintenance. It's always a good decision to drop the low profit and high maintenance customers.
By doing this, Red Hat keeps a good reputation since it can avoid dealing with users who are most likely to have a bad experience due to unrealistic expectations.
I'm just glad that they do provide the source code and that the folks behind CentOS do everything that they do!
Well, certainly there is nothing wrong with their decision and there are pros and cons to both approaches. I am also very happy they provide public sources.
On 08/16/2013 07:06 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On 08/16/2013 10:16 AM, Les Mikesell wrote:
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?
If you are asking for an opinion, I actually agree that they (Red Hat) should also give it away for free. However, nothing requires them to do so. Since they didn't, CentOS was created and fills that niche.
Again, they need to make money and because of that, they decided not to distribute the binaries for free. That is a valid business decision. Its not the only decision that could be made and it might not be the correct one, but its the one they made.
While the code base the RPMs are built from is the same, but the built binary software is NOT exactly the same. Red Hat can argue that therefore CentOS (or Scientific Linux, or Oracle Linux) is similar but not the same and if you want the real software .. OR .. if you want SLA support, then you should buy access from RHN. AND, they can also say, if you don't want to buy anything and that is your final decision, there is something that is similar you can use and if you ever need support then you can move to RHEL. As their CEO said, SUSE can not do that.
If they offer free version themselves, they they would have to publish sources and binaries for free version at the same time as for paid-for version, which would further lower their profits. Reasoning is that some people do not care about support, but expect fast security releases. So if Red Hat offered free version, they would not have incentive to pay for fast release.
If Red Hat tried to release packages even few days later then for paid-for version, they would be obvious bad guys in peoples eyes, greedy, etc.
By offering only source code, they make sure they are faster then those recompiling their source packages, so they are obvious good guys that provide for their customers, but at the same time they are obvious choice for all businesses. And I and majority of others are fine with that.
On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Johnny Hughes johnny@centos.org wrote:
On 08/15/2013 03:12 PM, Robert Arkiletian wrote:
http://www.businessinsider.com/red-hat-ceo-go-ahead-copy-our-software-2013-8
Title says is all. Nice to know RH understands and accepts the relationship between CentOS and RHEL.C
Although it is complex. After all, if too many choose CentOS, there may no longer be a CentOS. However, I don't think I would refer to CentOS as a "parasite" as the author Matt Asay does. More appropriate to call it symbiotic.
Is the relationship a 50/50 affair? Not sure.
Complicating matters even more is Oracle Unmistakable Linux.
I think that Red Hat understands the benefit that they get from CentOS, as expressed by Mr, Whitehurst's statement:
"CentOS is one of the reasons that the RHEL ecosystem is the default. It helps to give us an ubiquity that RHEL might otherwise not have if we forced everyone to pay to use Linux. So, in a micro sense we lose some revenue, but in a broader sense, CentOS plays a very valuable role in helping to make Red Hat the de facto Linux."
Spot on. "They understand the symbiotic relationship." Thank you for quoting that, Johnny.
Its obvious the benefit that CentOS gets from Red Hat (without those sources, publicly released, CentOS would be extremely hard ... almost impossible). SUSE does not release their enterprise sources and there is no SLES clone because of it.
We do want people to use CentOS for everything they feel comfortable using it for (obviously), but we also would recommend that people use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for things where they want a service level agreements or the specific certifications (Like Common Criteria EAL, etc.) that Red Hat has spent tons of money and effort to get. We would also recommend the Red Hat training and certification program for people who want to get career training that is applicable to CentOS.
The bottom line ... Robert is correct, the relationship is certainly symbiotic and not parasitic. Red Hat (the company) needs to make money,
If anything the journalist deserves the heat and criticism for trying to make clones look/sound bad. After all, bad news sells better than good news, right? [No need to answer.]
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.
I've long had a personal lab based on Fedora, Debian, and CentOS (though my install base has other creatures as well). If I didn't have CentOS, I might run Fedora (it's not too bad on stability for non-critical applications) -- BUT I'd have more of a Debian install base if CentOS wasn't around.
*Everyone* that's chimed in has valid points, but they aren't worth arguing about. Probably the only way to make change (if necessary) is for RH employees to back any proposals for change.
As Dave pointed out there have been some oddities in what is released (in availability and even the quickness of some updates), but overall I don't think it's anything to get upset about. I suppose that's because I know I have options ... kinda goes along with OpenOffice vs LibreOffice, etc.
Look at the bright side! [We have CentOS, we have options.]
Have a great weekend everyone.
On 08/16/2013 10:53 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
SUSE does not release their enterprise sources and there is no SLES clone because of it.
I can't believe I never thought about it (to wonder why there wasn't any SLES clone)...
Shouldn't they release the source for the GPL packages? I thought there was no way around it (and therefore that's why Red Hat had to do it).
On 8/16/2013 6:07 PM, Jorge Fábregas wrote:
On 08/16/2013 10:53 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
SUSE does not release their enterprise sources and there is no SLES clone because of it.
I can't believe I never thought about it (to wonder why there wasn't any SLES clone)...
Shouldn't they release the source for the GPL packages? I thought there was no way around it (and therefore that's why Red Hat had to do it).
a number of embedded consumer boxes just release tarballs of the stock distribution software, without any of their modifications, drivers, or build configuration. try and find sources for, say, a WD TV Live, and you'll find a tarball of distribution tarballs of the linux kernel, ulibc, and various other such things, all dead stock.
On 08/16/2013 08:07 PM, Jorge Fábregas wrote:
On 08/16/2013 10:53 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
SUSE does not release their enterprise sources and there is no SLES clone because of it.
I can't believe I never thought about it (to wonder why there wasn't any SLES clone)...
Shouldn't they release the source for the GPL packages? I thought there was no way around it (and therefore that's why Red Hat had to do it).
1. They only have to release Sources to the people who they have given (sold) their software. They do not have to release them to the general public.
2. Red Hat goes above and beyond this requirement, not because they have to but because they want to.
On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 10:25:40PM -0500, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On 08/16/2013 08:07 PM, Jorge Fábregas wrote:
On 08/16/2013 10:53 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
SUSE does not release their enterprise sources and there is no SLES clone because of it.
I can't believe I never thought about it (to wonder why there wasn't any SLES clone)...
Shouldn't they release the source for the GPL packages? I thought there was no way around it (and therefore that's why Red Hat had to do it).
- They only have to release Sources to the people who
they have given (sold) their software. They do not have to release them to the general public.
- Red Hat goes above and beyond this requirement, not
because they have to but because they want to.
Around the middle of section 4.1.2 here:
https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html
is explained that sources should be made available to anyone who has the binary code, not only direct customers:
«[...] v2 § 3(b) requires that offers be "to give any third party" a copy of the Corresponding Source. GPLv3 has a similar requirement, stating that an offer must be valid for "anyone who possesses the object code". These requirements indicated in v2 § 3(c) and v3 § 6(c) are so that non-commercial redistributors may pass these offers along with their distributions. Therefore, the offers must be valid not only to your customers, but also to anyone who received a copy of the binaries from them. Many distributors overlook this requirement and assume that they are only required to fulfill a request from their direct customers.»
Thus, the company can only find ways to restrict the (re)distribution of binaries in the first place to avoid that sources spread out. :-)
Mihai
oracle is the bad!! On Aug 15, 2013 11:12 PM, "Robert Arkiletian" robark@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.businessinsider.com/red-hat-ceo-go-ahead-copy-our-software-2013-8
Title says is all. Nice to know RH understands and accepts the relationship between CentOS and RHEL.
Although it is complex. After all, if too many choose CentOS, there may no longer be a CentOS. However, I don't think I would refer to CentOS as a "parasite" as the author Matt Asay does. More appropriate to call it symbiotic.
Is the relationship a 50/50 affair? Not sure.
Complicating matters even more is Oracle Unmistakable Linux. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
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Carl T. Miller -
Dave Johansen -
Eddie G. O'Connor Jr. -
Eero Volotinen -
John R Pierce -
Johnny Hughes -
Jorge Fábregas -
Les Mikesell -
Ljubomir Ljubojevic -
m.roth＠5-cent.us -
Mihai T. Lazarescu -
Robert Arkiletian -
SilverTip257 -
Tom Bishop