Red Hat’s CentOS “acquisition” good for both sides, but ‘ware the Jabberwock
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Re: Red Hat’s CentOS “acquisition” good for both sides, but ‘ware the Jabberwock
#2On one hand, this might actually improve the state of CentOS. But on the other hand, it's a bit of a conflict of interest for Red Hat to be maintaining the free (as in freedom) version. The real question is, how compatible is the freemium (as in beer) business model with open-source interests?
Re: Red Hat’s CentOS “acquisition” good for both sides, but ‘ware the Jabberwock
#3On one hand, this might actually improve the state of CentOS. But on the other hand, it's a bit of a conflict of interest for Red Hat to be maintaining the free (as in freedom) version. The real question is, how compatible is the freemium (as in beer) business model with open-source interests?
I question my own understanding here, because I still don't think I grok all the motivation for this action (on both sides), but I don't think it's a conflict of interest. Nobody buys RHEL because they can't get it anywhere else. They buy it because it's what Red Hat officially supports. Or they buy it for one of the add-on projects that you have to pay for, like Satellite, etc. I don't think any of that changes with the merger. Just my 2c, though, because again - I feel like I'm missing something.
Re: Red Hat’s CentOS “acquisition” good for both sides, but ‘ware the Jabberwock
#4On one hand, this might actually improve the state of CentOS. But on the other hand, it's a bit of a conflict of interest for Red Hat to be maintaining the free (as in freedom) version. The real question is, how compatible is the freemium (as in beer) business model with open-source interests?
RedHat, already is free as in freedom, thats why CentOS is allowed to exist. They're just not Free as in Free beer. The corporations who pay for RHEL aren't going to suddenly cancel all of their support contracts.
Re: Red Hat’s CentOS “acquisition” good for both sides, but ‘ware the Jabberwock
#5On one hand, this might actually improve the state of CentOS. But on the other hand, it's a bit of a conflict of interest for Red Hat to be maintaining the free (as in freedom) version. The real question is, how compatible is the freemium (as in beer) business model with open-source interests?
No, it's a transition from Premium Enterprise Linux to Freemium Enterprise Linux, since the usage of CentOS pretty much made that already the case. They are so compatible that you can purchase support contracts for CentOS by doing an in-place upgrade to RHEL from CentOS for support.
This is more of a strategic move to make Oracle Linux and the other RHEL copies and CentOS-wannabes less compelling: many enterprises that are evaluating Oracle vs. Red Hat will stick to the single-vendor option, and many enterprises that are evaluating Ubuntu vs. CentOS can finally check both checkboxes for "corporate backed and officially endorsed" and "$0 to get started".
Re: Red Hat’s CentOS “acquisition” good for both sides, but ‘ware the Jabberwock
#6I don't see why so many people think this deal is such a head scratcher. Red Hat is shifting away from pure support to a suite of cloud services. People are more likely to choose them if they are already using a Red Hat platform. This is especially useful if you're obliged to maintain a free version.
The moment you enter the blade business, you stop caring if someone is giving away your razors.
Re: Red Hat’s CentOS “acquisition” good for both sides, but ‘ware the Jabberwock
#7On one hand, this might actually improve the state of CentOS. But on the other hand, it's a bit of a conflict of interest for Red Hat to be maintaining the free (as in freedom) version. The real question is, how compatible is the freemium (as in beer) business model with open-source interests?
What's the worst thing that could happen? CentOS is literally RHEL with the Red Hat branding removed. Even if Red Hat decided to cancel the CentOS project for some reason, the RHEL source code will still be available.
Re: Red Hat’s CentOS “acquisition” good for both sides, but ‘ware the Jabberwock
#8On one hand, this might actually improve the state of CentOS. But on the other hand, it's a bit of a conflict of interest for Red Hat to be maintaining the free (as in freedom) version. The real question is, how compatible is the freemium (as in beer) business model with open-source interests?
What's the worst thing that could happen? CentOS is literally RHEL with the Red Hat branding removed. Even if Red Hat decided to cancel the CentOS project for some reason, the RHEL source code will still be available.
The worst that could happen would be that Red Hat would stop shipping sources for all the BSD/MIT/etc licensed bits, and be as difficult as possible for GPL sources (written offer, valid for three years, and making CentOS pay for the media costs, and then play stupid legal games with the requirement that it be `on a medium customarily used for software interchange').
They don't strictly have to put all the sources in a conveniently compilable format on FTP servers.
Re: Red Hat’s CentOS “acquisition” good for both sides, but ‘ware the Jabberwock
#9I wonder what this is going to do to the Centos-Xen[1] project?
[1]http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2013/06/20/welcome-to-the-xen4...
Re: Red Hat’s CentOS “acquisition” good for both sides, but ‘ware the Jabberwock
#10To those wondering, I think that Red Hat doesn't make that much money from SELLING RHEL. It's the support, certifications and those things that are making Red Hat's budget. So CentOS and RHEL aren't really competing products. But Red Hat can now offer support even to CentOS customers.
(I'm Red Hat employee.)