Now if they can just get rid of RPM I might come back!
Do come back, it's better than the competition nowadays. :)
CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat
21–30 of 126 posts
Re: CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat
#22I see this as RH not wanting competition and/or wanting to somehow control CentOS. It's no wonder, honestly, that Debian is gaining in popularity as they are the last of the main Linux distros who control their own destiny. I feel very awkward about this news.
Don't worry, be happy. CentOS was never real competition to RH, instead it was providing an invaluable ecosystem. In a way RH always controlled CentOS since the latter is just a clone. If CentOS gets shitty you can always move to SL, Puias etc or make your own.
And if you need multimedia codecs, a version of VLC that works properly, and if you live somewhere where it is legal to play a DVD on a machine running linux, there is the Nux desktop repository.
Re: CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat
#23In the beginning, there was Red Hat Linux[1]. It was sold in boxes at stores such as CompUSA (remember?) but was also available for free download from Red Hat.
Then, Red Hat decided they could make more money by spinning off Red Hat Linux into a separate enterprise-only product called Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which they declined to make available for free in a ready-to-install binary form. Fedora[2] was also spun off at this time, as the free successor to Red Hat Linux that was supposed to be only suitable for home users. Fedora development was/is sponsored by Red Hat but they did not offer end-user support, in contrast to RHEL.
Meanwhile, there was demand for a free version of RHEL. Since it was built with GPL software, Red Hat was obligated to make it available in source form, but their trademark policy prohibited anyone else from using the Red Hat name. Therefore, a group of volunteers took RHEL, removed Red Hat trademarks, and called it CentOS. To avoid confusion, CentOS explained the origins of the distribution on their web site. For their efforts, they were threatened by Red Hat's legal department and forced to remove all mentions of Red Hat and even links to Red Hat's web site from the CentOS web site. CentOS complied and began referring to its Red Hat derivations using the euphemism PNAELV[3].
Now, Red Hat has again decided they would benefit from being more directly involved in providing an open-source, freely-available enterprise Linux distribution. We've come full circle.
(Flippant depiction aside, I intend no antagonism, but merely find the history of these projects interesting.)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Linux [2]: https://fedoraproject.org/en/about-fedora [3]: http://www.pnaelv.net
Re: CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat
#24Re: CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat
#25I see this as RH not wanting competition and/or wanting to somehow control CentOS. It's no wonder, honestly, that Debian is gaining in popularity as they are the last of the main Linux distros who control their own destiny. I feel very awkward about this news.
Most Redhat customers use Centos (eg for build, test machines etc), and many Centos users are potential RH customers. Fedora does not fill the same niche, so having all three makes sense.
Re: CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat
#26Does this mean we can finally stop referring to RedHat as an unnamed "Prominent North American Enterprise Linux Vendor"?
Explanation below - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020277.
Re: CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat
#27A bit more information in the official announcement: http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2014-Janua... "With great excitement I'd like to announce that we are joining the Red Hat family. The CentOS Project ( http://www.centos.org ) is joining forces with Red Hat. Working as part of the Open Source and Standards team ( http://community.redhat.com/ ) to foster rapid innovation beyond the platform into the…
Additional useful highlights: > - Some of us now work for Red Hat, but not RHEL. > - Red Hat is offering to sponsor some of the buildsystem and initial content delivery resources > - Because we are now able to work with the Red Hat legal teams, some of the contraints that resulted in efforts like CentOS-QA being behind closed doors, now go away and we hope to have the entire build, test, and delivery chain open to an…
Why would the build, test, and delivery chain be subject to Red Hat's legal team? Did the process to remove Red Hat's marks from their GPL'd source trigger trademark issues?
Re: CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat
#28I really wish that, when RHEL/CentOS branches from Fedora to make a new release, they would also keep and provide a snapshot of Fedora's repository at that time, just like what Ubuntu does when they sync with Debian Sid (i.e.: packages in 'main' and 'restricted' repos are supported, all other packages in the Debian archive are imported and made available in 'universe' and 'multiverse' repository for your convenience)…
> I really wish that, when RHEL/CentOS branches from Fedora to make a new release, they would also keep a snapshot of Fedora's repository at that time It isn't always so easy. I don't know what RHEL7 is like, but for 6 and 5 there wasn't a complete correlation between a Fedora release and a RHEL release. For example, 6 is mostly based on Fedora 12, except for a bunch of backports from 13 and a few from 14.
7 is definitely a mix of bits from 19 and 20.
Re: CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat
#29I really wish that, when RHEL/CentOS branches from Fedora to make a new release, they would also keep and provide a snapshot of Fedora's repository at that time, just like what Ubuntu does when they sync with Debian Sid (i.e.: packages in 'main' and 'restricted' repos are supported, all other packages in the Debian archive are imported and made available in 'universe' and 'multiverse' repository for your convenience)…
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Re: CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat
#30I see this as RH not wanting competition and/or wanting to somehow control CentOS. It's no wonder, honestly, that Debian is gaining in popularity as they are the last of the main Linux distros who control their own destiny. I feel very awkward about this news.
The absolute worst that can happen is a return to the state of today. Also, CentOS didn't do anything new and creative and visionary that all. Their goal from the beginning was to replicate RHEL with all the non-free bits (mostly artwork and trademarks) replaced.
The concern isn't to have anything new and creative. That's not always the goal of OSS. The goal is the have free and open equal alternatives to corporate-controlled software. Debian, for example, is likely the last of the truly unencumbered distros.