[nylug-talk] CentOS makes Red Hat(R) money, and works with them (officially so via Fedora(TM)) -- WAS: Recommendations turned "distro-pissing" ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Sat, 2008-03-15 at 16:37 -0400, Ron Guerin wrote:
> The thing I find strange is the existence of CentOS, which essentially
> exists only to deprive Red Hat of income and to glom off the nutty
> idea
> that RHEL is somehow the only thing you should ever run.

Saying something like that can get you easily fired ...
  INSIDE OF RED HAT ITSELF!  ;)  

CentOS serves a duality with RHEL, and I don't know of single
consultant, developer, executive, manager or other person in Red Hat
that does not appreciate CentOS.  CentOS makes Red Hat money.  Let me
say that again, CentOS makes Red Hat money.  Visit Red Hat's MA and NC
locations, namely their developer departments (which make up virtually
all of MA, and one of two buildings in NC), and you'll see more than
just Fedora and RHEL on desktops.  ;) 

Considering CentOS makes Red Hat money, and Oracle uses it as its basis,
there is a reason why Red Hat "works" with CentOS and Oracle, even if
Oracle is the only "official partner" because CentOS is not a similar
entity.  Developers don't care about that, and developers make up the
majority of Red Hat.  That's always been Red Hat.  That will always be
Red Hat.

Reality ...

Red Hat is a brand.  People pay for that brand.  The reasons vary from
not just support or service level agreements (SLAs), but the reality
that for every dollar you send Red Hat, it funds a lot of anally and
staunch GPL-only development.  If Red Hat ever "screws up" its brand, it
won't survive.  Sometimes even the best intentions can screw a brand --
e.g., JetBlue's "delay" fiasco last year.

There's no more proof that Red Hat is a brand than when Red Hat was
forced into "giving up" on the continually revised "Trademark Usage
Guidelines" and just finally removing its namesake corporate title from
its 100% Redistributable products.  Over 90% of the people I heard
complaints from were because they could no longer install "Fedora" --
regardless of its 1:1 development as Red Hat Linux before -- because
their boss didn't see "Red Hat" on it.

Every day Red Hat gets calls from its customers who have also deployed
CentOS internally to save costs.  Some do this honestly and admit it,
while some others try to be sneaky.  At some point, the number of people
who want additional Service Level Agreements (SLA) for systems forces
them to pay money, of their own free will.  That's the reality.

Now some people say Red Hat's support "sucks" and is "not worth it."  I
will not address that, I know many varying complaints.  But beyond the
fact that dollars sent to Red Hat are mainly put on developers, and
those developers work only on GPL software, the feedback Red Hat
continually gets from corporations on their "value" is undisputed in the
software industry, and even technology.  Red Hat is right up there with
Google.

People keep buying Red Hat subscriptions and SLAs because they see at
least one "value" to it among many.  CentOS is a distro that is
appreciated by Red Hat, even if only officially in Fedora(TM) because
that's Red Hat's "100% Redistributable" branding with no
"corporate/legal contracts" that are over-arching.

Hell, even Red Hat's new CEO build several businesses on Slackware
through very recently, and still a Slacker at heart at times.  If you
think every Red Hat person things it's "only their way," then Red Hat
wouldn't have its upstream focus, as well as its downstream focus when
Red Hat is "upstream."  CentOS is just another partner in that
community, even if it's only officially recognized through the
non-corporate namesake trademark of "Fedora(TM)" for countless, legal
reasons.


On Sat, 2008-03-15 at 16:37 -0400, Ron Guerin wrote:
> (Red Hat's marketing dept earned their lunch on that one.)

Really?  How so?  Understand its 100% legal, not marketing.

Any "omissions" of the lineage of Red Hat Linux -> Fedora Project are
sound legal reaons.  Let me say that again, they are for sound legal
reasons.  Otherwise Fedora(TM) is the trademark for 100% Redistributable
products from Red Hat(R).  Just how it has to be.

I still have "arguments" with people who never used Red Hat Linux, only
the Red Hat Linux rebuild for Cobalt MIPS systems.  The "epiphany" in
those discussions are unmistakable when people quickly realize I'm
saying, as well as what happened after Sun bought Cobalt.

Also blame CheapBytes.  When Red Hat attempted to clarify the "Trademark
Usage Guidelines" on the Red Hat(R) trademark so it couldn't be abused
by Cobalt-Sun, Microsoft, IBM and others, but legally by CheapBytes and
the like, they were demonized by CheapBytes and others.  At some point,
it came to a head because it wasn't solving the problem with Cobalt-Sun
at all.

Have you ever read Canonical's Ubuntu(R) "Trademark Usage Guidelines"?
How about SuSE(R)'s, especially before they 

On Sat, 2008-03-15 at 16:37 -0400, Ron Guerin wrote:
> If someone really believes in this has-to-be-RHEL thing, *buy* 
> RHEL and actually get RHEL instead of feeling like you're won
> something 
> against The Man by screwing Red Hat out of the income that pays for
> all 
> the work Red Hat does that the rest of us get to benefit from.

I wish I could publicly say something on that, on just some sample names
of people who use CentOS as their primary system.  Again, I highly
encourage you to visit Red Hat, especially in MA or if you know anyone
who works at home but is a Red Hat employee.  ;)


-- 
Bryan J  Smith              Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
-------------------------------------------------------------
           Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution