[CentOS-devel] Defining what CentOS is

Ned Slider ned at unixmail.co.uk
Tue Dec 23 00:02:33 UTC 2008


Karanbir Singh wrote:
> Dag Wieers wrote:
>> We might be able to kill more than one bird with a single stone, so I am 
>> looking for more things we want to prevent distributors/integrators doing 
>> without making it impossible for them to use CentOS altogether.
> 
> so, a sort of Best Practices for these people, sounds like a good idea. 
> I should dig out my talk from last Fosdem as well. That might go well 
> with this page.
> 
>> My first concern was the support problem, what do we (at minimum) expect 
>> to have when users say they have a CentOS. A working yum using the CentOS 
>> official repositories, a minimal set of official packages (which ?).
>>
>> Without complying to the list of requirements, they may not refer to 
>> CentOS (and people will not have the wrong expectations for support).
>>
>>  	http://wiki.centos.org/About/CentOS-product-definition
>>
>> Feedback please ?
> 

<snip>

> 
> Also, as far as I am concerned, if their product has >= 1 rpm taken from 
> CentOS, then thats what it is, based on CentOS, based around CentOS, 
> incorporating CentOS, whatever one might term it as. If its got bits 
> from CentOS, they should be able to tell people its got bits from CentOS.
> 

Agreed, but there's also a big difference between "based on CentOS" (or 
whatever term one wishes to use) and "is CentOS".

I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as 
CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed 
key parts of the system. The community can't be expected to support it 
when we (the community) don't know what a solution provider has changed 
or why they have changed it.

So we're back to the question of what can and can't be changed in a 
system for it still to be CentOS.

What about artwork - if a system has been changed to the point where it 
is no longer CentOS, but now based on CentOS, can it continue to use the 
CentOS artwork and logos? What if the artwork alone is changed 
(rebranding) - is that still CentOS and can it be marketed as such?





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