I just have to ask. How can you justify taking the value that Red Hat provides and giving that value away for free?

As a moral person I can't justify making the switch to CentOS over Red Hat. The financial decision is an easy one $$$$$ vs $0. I can also live without the support as I don't ever call Red Hat. But this all sounds like biting the hand that feeds you. It also strikes me as a little gutless, to not create a distro that stands on its own two feet like a Slackware, Debian or Red Hat.

Yes, I realize that because of GPL and various other free beer licenses that CentOS is completely in the legal to "clone" RHEL. But I would feel dirty switching my RHEL servers to CentOS.

Please someone convince me otherwise, because I'm adding servers (virtualized) this year and don't really want to bust my budget if I can help it.

Okay, my heat shields are up and have umbrella drink of choice... so bring the heat!! But please, I beg you...At least one rational person please address my main question so I can switch to freebie Linux without having to spend too much time in the confessional booth!

Thanks,

Sean

p.s. I can just envision the ensuing explanation resembling Peter Gibbons' rationale for stealing the rounded interest amounts in Office Space.

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Sorry, cannot help you here........... This is your choice to make and I will not attempt to change your choice. You are perfectly free to use CentOS or any other "free" version of Linux you choose or not. The only thing a "moral person" might keep in mind is the legal reasons not to use additional installations of RHEL then what you have paid support for at one time or another.

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Of all the reasons I have heard as to which Distribution to use a need to confess my sins to the parish preist is a new one but I will try to put my thoughts across.

I may be mistaken but IMO Redhat has used the open source platform to build a multi-million Dollar company from free software by charging for support and professional services justified in doing so because they gave back to the open source community in helping to develop the platform, one caviat of doing this is that they have to release said software under the GPL. Now CentOS is doing to Redhat what Redhat did to linux, except for one thing...they don't charge anything, they provide bug fixes and testing to the upstream provider in the same way that redhat provided to the linux community. Even Redhats Lawyers only complaints have been regarding the use of trademark logo's etc identifying the upstream provider.

I understand that 2 wrongs do not make a right one but there is nothing wrong here or immoral, if there was then Radhat are as guilty as the CentOS team and you should be looking for another Distribution....can I suggest Vatinux perhaps?


:)

Ian

Thanks, Ian. Very good synopsis of the situation. It all comes back to the GPL what it means to use GPL software, a topic I unfortunately don't have an intimate knowledge of. I'm going over to spend some time with the hippies over at gnu.org and fsf.org and see what they think about my frequent trips to see the priest. I'll report back with my findings for all you catholics using CentOS. :)

I think I'm pretty close to being able to download CentOS.

smc7000: You missed the point about open source.

The business model is and always has been about service, not about selling a product.

It’s a lot like the razor/razor blade business model: Virtually give away the razor and charge for the blades. Without their linux distribution, RedHat couldn’t make nearly as much on linux support.

If anything, CentOS will increase RedHat’s market share and penetration in the long term by influencing a wider audience to try it. I view the RedHat/CentOS synergy as a win-win situation. Think of all the free “advertising” they get out of CentOS and its users. This is viral marketing at its best!

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If Red Hat is charging for support and subscriptions, how is installing the binaries on more than one machine a violation? The license agreement states that you can freely distribute the source and binaries. As long as you don't call and ask for support on issues on the additional machines or somehow use RHN on these machines, where is the violation?

http://www.redhat.com/licenses/rhel_rha_eula.html

My first foray into the Enterprise Linux world was the purchase of a boxed set
of RHEL 3 for $89 plus tax. I installed and immediately found how little I knew
about "configuring and setting up" a computer.

Had a ton of problems with "up2date" and coupled with my lack of Linux knowledge
it was no pleasure cruise.I tried the FC's and just recently loaded Centos 4.3 and
feel quite comfortable and morally obligated to stick to Open Source for my needs.

Do what you feel comfortable with and if it is "legal" why not.Depending on what
part of the planet you live on "legal/moral" can be many things and it all boils down
to control and money.

Just do it.

How much is RHEL paying Linus Torvalds? One mans Robin Hood is another man's thief. Centos is legal, no one is sealing from any one its all under open source.

SUSE, Mandriva etc have free downloads, you can chose to buy and get support or not your choice.

The centos guys are doing a lot of good work.

RHEL or Centos the choice is yours.

Yeah people have hit the nail on the head

1- Red Hat can't sell their OS, they can only sell the physical disks/ shipping costs they incur and any support they choose to offer. This was something they agreed to when they joined the GNU/Linux community.

2- Red Hat really makes their money being a fall guy. You know what they say s*it rolls down hill. Companies buy Red Hat support, so when things go wrong their is someone "official" to blame. Its a cost-of-business / risk management decision.

E.g. if you are a business, you wouldn't want to buy your inventory off the street (or e-bay) - you should use a reputable dealer. Red Hat, like it or not, is the reputable dealer for Linux.

Without their direct support and assitance their product has no value. I actually paid $400+ for RHEL 3, but for just a single year of patchy service, for a single server in a small (miniscule) operation, its not worth it for me to renew. I can manage with other free Linux distributions just fine.

If I get established as a large corp. and I have to have an entire IT department, the $400 would be very cheap when compared to the trouble of making the IT department de-bug free distributions. That is the only linux market Red Hat can ever hope to "exploit".

Anyway - the final real thing is, Red Hat is required to make their software available for free, because they are using other things under the GNU license which requires them to do so, if they use it (e.g. the Linux Kernel, KDE, Gnome, etc etc). You should read what red hat themselves say on the subject:
http://www.redhat.com/about/whyopensource/

Actually I believe Red Hat CAN sell their Linux... but who would buy something they could also get for free? Instead of even attempting that slippery slope, they focus on support instead.

For Red Hat, though, it is a lot easier to support a Linux that they built rather then try to support a community-driven distro where some decisions are made by the loudest or most popular memebers and who has interests not in line with the Enterprise-oriented focus?

I think you're completely right about corporations not wanting to go with some off-the-street distro ("*psst* he buddy... wanna buy this genuine authentic Linux?") .

It's going to be interesting to see what Oracle has up their sleeves, if they are going to look at building their own linux (possibly from Red Hat SRPMs) or what?

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No, they can not. It would be illegal if they tried. RedHat Linux is based upon the GNU GPL which specifically says if you use any of the works, all the derivative works MUST also be made free through the GNU GPL. Period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License

Both CentOS and Red Hat are 100% GPL "free software" that you can install on as many PCs as you like.

However if you have signed a RHN agreement you are agreeing to pay for RHN for each and every PC you install Red Hat on.

It is possible to cancel your RHN (by contacting Red Hat) but then you wont get RHN updates for any of your PCs alternatively you could use CentOS instead !

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Yes they could if they wanted, free software means freedom, not free beer. See:

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

But of course, with that freedom comes the freedom to redistribute for free.

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What exactly is the value that Red Hat provides?
- Distribution built from open source software?
- Update service?
- Support service?
- Developers that improve the software base?
- Viable corporation that can enter into contracts for all the above?

I think it is really the last item and CentOS does not give that away. Maybe you would say that the value of Red Hat's distribution was diminished by CentOS providing an equivalent for free. But how is it diminished? It is not, but is strengthened through expanded use, bug fixes, and knowledge base. Now, fewer people may contract for Red Hat support just to get the distribution. But, Red Hat does not own the right to restrict the distribution of the collective work of thousands of volunteers just so it can sell more support.

Please don't get me wrong, I think Red Hat offers a lot of value. We needed a distribution that we could distribute as part of a larger system. Our customer would not want to depend on a garage full of fanatics for their support so Debian was out even though I really liked it. Red Hat fit the bill. However, reading into the support license we found that if one system was under support we agreed to pay support for every system and we agreed to be audited. Well, we have development systems and servers and half configured experiments sitting around and just the cost of keeping track of it all would be to much. So, now we can develop with CentOS and if a customer wants a contract supported system, Red Hat is right there.

So I ask, how can you justify taking the value of thousands of Linux volunteers and giving Red Hat money for it?
Sometime you can and sometime you can't. Thank God for CentOS.

My own 2 cent ansver :
I have to modify the OS after installation ( kernel configuration and non-certified products addition ) and thus wont be able to have support from RedHat outside system updates.
If I would be able to pay just for updates and no support it would have been ok but paying for support and get no support is something I cant justify to my managers. I guess I should have better support from the CentOS community than from the RedHad company if I enter problems with my "tweaks".

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Correct me if I am wrong, but Red Hat have released rebuildable SRPM's which CentOS is made from. Yes they are required by law to release their source code under the GPL, but they are not required to release it in prepackaged SRPM's like they have done. If they had something against a project like CentOS, they certainly would not have facilitated its existence by releasing those SRPM's. Yes such a project would still be possible, but it would take more work, and besides the point is that Red Hat indirectly (and maybe directly too, can't verify) has basically said it's ok to do this. What's not ok to do is call them for support with CentOS, but I think that's pretty obvious and has been covered many times.

the start of this topic was posted as follows:

I just have to ask. How can you justify taking the value that Red Hat provides and giving that value away for free?

I would just like to point out the following:
why does redhat charge for some thing that is supposed to be free should be the question

the answer is they don't nobody does they acctually charge for the documentation disc support etc that is optional with it so no-one should feel guilty about using "free to use " software

Just curious,

Did you ever download and install CentOS? I read all the posts, and some of them were actually relevant to your question/concerns? Did you ever resolve them?

Michael.

Sheesh

I will be polite, and not suggest getting a life.

There are a lot of really big moral questions. Thsi is small stuff.

In no particular order, we got Islamo Fascism (the repuplicans didn't coin this phrase, Salmon Rusdie did)

We have Republicans incouraging illegal immigration to keep our pay down.

We got Christian fundamentalist bashing everthing in sight.

My job was outsourced to India.

We got people commuting 100 to 200 miles aday in gas guzzlers w/no passengers.

We got Dell inflating their quarterly sales numbers so they can sell their stock at a higher price, and then buy it back at less than they sold it for after you realise its not gonna perform.

Don't get me started.

As one of those 'horrible religious conservatives', I don't see a moral question here at all.

Microsoft has paid for the development of their Windows OS (beta testers aside) and can protect the code they paid for. Using it would be considered theft (except in China).

Anyone who develops Linux must agree to the Linux licencing agreements. In addition, the Cent OS source vendor made a contract with the Linux development community. That contract stated (non-legal paraphrase here) that in exchange for Linux developers work on their OS (worth hundreds of millions of dollars) they would allow anyone free access to the source code produced.

In other words, Microsoft paid for the Windows Source. They own it (at least in the US). The Cent OS source vendor did not pay for and does not own the Linux source. They only own their trademarks. Those trademarks cannot be found in Cent OS or on this site outside the forms where they fall under the US First Amendment and 'fair use' practices.


Disclaimer:
I'm not a lawyer but I have stayed at at Holiday Inn at some time.