Re: What do you think of Centos

On Wed, 2006-02-22 at 23:54, Christofer C. Bell wrote:

That would be easier to understand if you'd explain how it
is different for Red Hat to redistribute the underlying
packages which they didn't write than it is for someone
else to redistribute them again in something that approximates
the same bundled group.

Sure, Les. Red Hat is devoting effort to distribution creation and
maintenance, and developing the glue software that holds all that
together (the installer, the system configuration tools, "Red
Hat-isms" in the boot process like /etc/sysconfig, SELinux
integration, etc). CentOS isn't doing any of that work.

They claim it is non-trivial to make a freely redistributable
version from the RH srpms. If you asked over on their
mail list they'd probably give you an estimate of the time
it really takes. They also add options not supported by
RHEL4, like putting firewire, reiserfs, and xfs support
back in. They aren't just copying existing binaries, but
others can copy what they have done.

Red Hat takes raw upstream software and turns it into a distribution.
I think that's great and there are obviously a number of other people
doing the same thing (Debian, SuSE, et al). CentOS is doing any of
that work.

How would anyone be better off if they re-invented yet another
way of building a distribution?

CentOS is taking a distribution created via someone else's hard work
and rebranding it as their own.

And in turn, openfiler and SMEserver continue on to produce
even more distributions. That's the way open source is
supposed to work.

They're essentially relying on Red
Hat Software, Inc., for all their distribution and release
engineering. I don't care for that.

At anyrate, Les, I appreciate your (and other's) desire to understand
my position, however irrational it may sound to you.

It would be rational if Red Hat had not chosen to work with
open source to begin with, but the point of being open is
that others can continue to modify it even in ways that
you might not have chosen yourself. With the GPL in particular
it is a obligation to permit others to do that if you do it
yourself.

--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx


--
fedora-list mailing list
fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list

Relevant Pages

  • Re: What do you think of Centos
    ... is different for Red Hat to redistribute the underlying ... else to redistribute them again in something that approximates ... CentOS isn't doing any of that work. ... Red Hat takes raw upstream software and turns it into a distribution. ...
    (Fedora)
  • Re: Ex Red Hatter turned to the dark side?
    ... that you would call him a whore brings to question ... as for the Open Source model consider the ... position Red Hat is in a little more seriously. ... Their income model is in support. ...
    (Fedora)
  • Red Hat: Open Source News (fwd)
    ... Red Hat Open Source News ... To challenge the dominance of Microsoft's Windows PC operating system, ... Japan is promoting the Linux system in public schools. ... Open Source Law: Open source and the IT trade deficit ...
    (comp.os.linux.announce)
  • Re: Red Hat "Open Source Assurance"
    ... >> This week Red Hat announced that all existing and future Red Hat ... >> Enterprise Linux customers are now covered under the Open Source ... It should amount to a significant chunk of money, such that SCO ...
    (comp.unix.sco.misc)
  • Re: Does suse distribute official retail versions in dvd boxes?
    ... I hate to bring bad news, but Red Hat decided a few months back version ... It wont provide the complete system in iso images free for download ... That is even less then SuSE now does. ... Further it is very hard to create almost the same distribution from the ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)