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CentOS 5 Released
jonesy16 writes "Only a few weeks behind the release of Red Hat Enterprise 5, CentOS announced today the immediate release of version 5 of the free derivative of RHEL 5. Torrents are available for both i386 and x86_64. New features include compiz and AIGLX support as well as better virtualization and thin-client support. Package updates include Apache-2.2, kernel-2.6.18, Gnome-2.16, and KDE-3.5."
I want an enterprise quality Linux to run a database server on it. But I don't want to pay the Redhat price tag; CentOS gives me the quality of Redhat Enterprise Linux for free. So it's running my database server and doing so quite well too.
Strange. The last thing I'd want in an enterprise server is compiz.
His point is that most of the code in Red Hat products is not owned or written by Red Hat, as is the case with every other distro. They simply feature freeze and stabilize it, and then sell support contracts for it. They are selling support, not the product.
If Red Hat did not want this to happen, they could simply not base their product on GPL software. Of course, if they did that, they would never have become profitable in the first place, because there is no way they could have built a product as capable as RHEL5 from the ground up completely on their own and stayed in business.
Red Hat, while contributing as you point out, piggyback's on other peoples' work, and CentOS is doing the exact same thing to Red Hat. I don't see an issue here.
What about students, both formal and informal? Red Hat is the most popular distro when it comes to finding books. A free (as in beer) clone that you can work the exercises & examples on without the distraction and niggle of differences is a Good Thing(tm).
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Red Hat also make money from the contributions of others? I know Red Hat pays people to work on Linux, but don't they also benefit greatly from a lot of "free" labor from others? Not to knock Red Hat, but just trying to point out that this is the nature of the game with GPL work.
And thus the beauty of free (as in freedom) software. Red Hat takes the work of others, adds a few features, a lot of stability and testing, and sells their result with a support plan for a nifty profit. They give those changes back to the community, which then takes their work and releases a free (as in beer) version for people who don't need the support.
Everyone wins. This is no longer a zero-sum game. I don't understand why that's still so difficult for so many people to understand.
Absurd. Obviously Red Hat is going to demand the removal of their trademarks. The fact of the matter is that RH is very helpful towards the open source community. I see plenty of RH devs and employees participating in Fedora. And there is a lot of bleed-over as far as package development and work on bugs between CentOS and Fedora. It's all connected and RH has been nothing but supportive.
They're a clear force for 'good' in the world of Linux in my mind.