Conversion to Linux

[Monty J. Harder]

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 3:27 PM, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts at gmail.com>wrote:

> I'd also not recommend using CentOS, as they're undercutting Red Hat's
> business model and I think that's really uncool (sure it's legal, but it's
> not moral).


That is simply untrue.  CentOS is every bit as moral as Red Hat itself, and
everyone else who abides by the spirit (as well as the letter) of the GPL.
The people who use GPL code but don't play fair are the immoral ones.  We
all draw that line in slightly different places (see "Tivoization") but
CentOS is on the "fair" side, at least from where I sit.

Red Hat gets to use the work of everyone who contributes code under the GPL
or a compatible license, and it's perfectly moral for them to do that,
because those contributors have agreed that it's OK with them.  That makes
it every bit as moral for CentOS to use the code too.

What would be IMmoral would be for CentOS to use RH logos, or to represent
in some way that RH will support CentOS users, or is responsible for any
changes that CentOS may introduce once they have the sources.  They don't do
that.  They make it clear that they are recompiling the source that Red Hat
releases under the GPL.  They even avoid using the words "Red Hat" except
where it would be legally forbidden without Red Hat's express permission
(see http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).

Red Hat's business model is fundamentally the same as Novell or
Canonical's:  They sell support.  The difference is that Red Hat only
distributes the RH-branded product to its support customers, while Canonical
has promised us that they'll never split the code base over support
licensing.  One reason: making a pay-only version could make many of us
suspect that it's wandered over into that questionable-morality area.  The
very existence of clones like CentOS proves that Red Hat is abiding by their
moral and legal commitments to the countless coders whose work they use,
proving that RH is a good community member.  That gives them geek cred to go
along with the PHBs feeling all warm-n-fuzzy about doing business with The
Name In Linux.

Red Hat gains something else of value from the cloners' existence:  There is
now a far larger base of machines running binaries compiled from the same
sources that RH uses, so if a CentOS user finds a bug, and reports it to the
CentOS folks, they can confirm that the bug does in fact exist, write it up
and get information to upstream, which would include RH.  RH isn't having to
do any work to support these machines but gets these gamma testers to help
them find bugs.

And, of course, some CentOS users will decide they want support, and buy Red
Hat.  In that respect, CentOS can be a powerful marketing tool for RH; it
allows a prospective customer to build a server, install CentOS and the apps
they want to run on it, and do a shakedown cruise.  Once that looks good,
they may choose to install branded and supported RHEL, and sleep well
knowing that someone has their back.
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