Bill Thompson wrote:
On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:33:16 -0800
Stephan <geek@wickedclips.net> wrote:
It may be true that RH is too big to disappear entirely, but what
about the inconsistency of their company focus? Many companies (mine
included) have already been burnt because of the way RH redefined
their distribution model. First it was free with optional paid
support, then they dropped the desktop, then they went with licensed
Enterprise support only (which is the only reason CentOS exists in
the first place, to provide community support for RHE) and now they
are refocusing on virtualization and who knows what support they are
going to offer. They may not shut down, but past history has shown
that you can not rely on the availability and support the company
will offer tomorrow.
That was exactly my point.� I'm not an open source fanboy mind you;
without the corporate model, there wouldn't *be* any microcomputers.
It simply important to remember that corporations rarely give
products and services away out of charity, and ultimately revenue is
easier to achieve by making increasing the quality of solutions to
justify increasing the price tag, ultimately resulting in many
products being sold on hype alone (coughcoughVista) and not their
intrinsic value.� So long as CentOS exists under the corporate
guardianship as a stepchild of Red Hat, it's features and
functionality will reflect the corporate goals of RH.� That isn't
necessarily a bad thing; but it is *some* thing to consider when
making a final decision.
Stephan
You make a good point about supporting RH and their efforts to develop
Linux. However, using CentOS does not support the company or their
revenues. My understanding is that CentOS is an independent group and
is not managed by RH directly.
That's exactly what they claim on their website FAQ at centos.org.
Having said that, it can only be beneficial to Red Hat for CentOS to
operate, as it provides a stepping stone for new administrators in
smaller companies trying to make decisions about their IT department to
start with the 'free' version, and as their needs become more advanced
and complicated, they'll start requiring consultants, technical
support, etc. It's why Microsoft happily donates operating systems to
schools; children grow up on Windows, and expect to be familiar with it
as adults.
In fact, I believe that using CentOS in
conjunction with a licensed RHE installation violates the terms of the
RH support agreement. That was the case when I looked into this several
years ago, but RH may have since changed that agreement.
If you truly feel that RH should be given financial support
for their efforts and you can base your IT infrastructure on their
business decisions, you should license RHE directly and not use one of
the unofficial RH derivatives. My company could not make that decision,
so we opted for Debian. Since then I have not needed to review support
contracts and licensees for our Linux installations or worry much about
the future of the distribution.
I wouldn't
Nor do I ;) I'd be posting in the Fedora mailing list otherwise.
Stephan
|