[CentOS] RE: pronunciation? -- loving CentOS doesn't mean you have to bash Red Hat

On Thu, 2005-05-19 at 09:46 +0100, Martyn Drake wrote:
> I just pronounce CentOS these days as "no more ruddy expensive yearly fees
> to Red Hat".

RHEL is about Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and 5+ year updates, and
not about milking you dry.  For a $300+ product, you get free support
and the option to get guaranteed response times.  Red Hat originally
tried to sell a Red Hat Linux 6.2 E[nterprise] with SLAs.  But SuSE
Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 7 came out and showed that the industry
wanted a "separate enterprise product" and Red Hat followed suit.

[ Yes, SuSE brags about "being first with the enterprise idea." ]

But by paying that money, you fund the largest commercial GPL company
and collection of GPL projects.  Don't bash Red Hat, they are a very,
very good company -- 100% GPL-anal to the ultra-power.  The only other
company that comes close is now SuSE, thanx to Novell's purchase --
although Novell still a doesn't make their core goods GPL (whereas all
of Red Hat's developments are always 100% GPL).

As far as the trademark issues, don't blame Red Hat, but US Trademark
Law and companies like Cobalt, Sun and several others who abused Red
Hat's good will.  _No_ major commercial Linux vendor will ever allow
their trademark to be freely used on distributed modifications again,
precisely because of what Red Hat had to go through.

Companies like Caldera, SuSE and several vendors have vehemetly defended
their trademarks for such reasons (e.g., German trademark law is even
more of an issue than US).  A company who does not defend its trademark
can see it declared public domain.  Red Hat couldn't stop companies like
Cobalt and Sun from distributing heavily modified versions, and when
they turned around and tried to force Sun, Sun had legal standing to say
they could do what they wanted with Red Hat's trademark.

Sun did not find the same of SuSE however, and had to license once they
did.  ;->

People thought it was about Cheapbytes and that was not true at all.
Red Hat even made explicit guarantees in its various trademark revisions
so companies like Cheapbytes could distribute _unmodified_ copies of its
software with its trademarks.  They revised it several times but,
unfortunately, the abuse by other companies came to a head.

Hence the name change to Fedora Core.  Most of the other changes in
Fedora Core (no SLAs, updates limited to 1 year, etc...) were already in
effect as of Red Hat Linux 8.0 -- over a year before the name change
happened.  So other than the trademark issue, Red Hat remains unchanged.

> Although when I'm in a better financial position, I will start
> donating to the CentOS project proper whenever I can.

And that's a good thing.  But don't feel the need to bash Red Hat just
because you appreciate the CentOS project.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                 b.j.smith at ieee.org 
----------------------------------------------------------------- 
Beware of those who define their preference in terms of hate of
another option, and not on the positive merits of their selection