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CentOS was acquired by RedHat because it was eating into their market. So, I'm sure that many customers who have been using CentOS just because it existed have

CentOS was acquired by RedHat because it was eating into their market. So, I'm sure that many customers who have been using CentOS just because it existed have no problems upgrading to RHEL because it's such a small part of their budget that it doesn't matter. Meanwhile, CentOS did serve a purpose and those who absolutely don't want to upgrade to RHEL or are looking to start out without a subscription will be looking at other providers such as Project Lenix or Rocky Linux. I think this could have been handled better by IBM. They've made a complete mess out of this by introducing CentOS stream and dropping CentOS. There is value in keeping non-paying users in your own ecosystem. Canonical handles it pretty well.

sitkack 6y ago
> There is value in keeping non-paying users in your own ecosystem.
- arbitrage 6y ago
  potential value in the long-term. but real liability in the near-term. if the company doesn't want to, or thinks that it can't tolerate that risk over whatever the difference between near & long is, they'll cut the liability loose. to me, this hints at instability in the market and IT sector, which, c'mon, we already know about. so it's likely more of an admission that times are tough, and RHEL/IBM is looking out for themselves.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    So RHEL is un-differentiated enough to be a commodity provider that doesn't need freeloaders?
busterarm 6y ago
I think of it maybe a little differently. CentOS was acquired as a marketing tool to sell support contracts. RedHat was acquired by IBM because selling support contracts no longer works as an open source software business model. It was a rescue operation (on both sides), really. In a twisted way, it's a success story for OSS. The software is so good and its main users so competent that the support contract has moved from being the value to the value-add. (aside) Unfortunately, this is the same thing driving the adoption of all of these new split licenses, which I don't think is a positive direction. (aside): This is actually the second demonstration of this. The first was when Rackspace got rid of its world-class support organization in a race to compete on costs.

sitkack 6y ago

> There is value in keeping non-paying users in your own ecosystem.

arbitrage 6y ago
potential value in the long-term. but real liability in the near-term. if the company doesn't want to, or thinks that it can't tolerate that risk over whatever the difference between near & long is, they'll cut the liability loose. to me, this hints at instability in the market and IT sector, which, c'mon, we already know about. so it's likely more of an admission that times are tough, and RHEL/IBM is looking out for themselves.
- sitkack 6y ago
  So RHEL is un-differentiated enough to be a commodity provider that doesn't need freeloaders?

busterarm 6y ago

I think of it maybe a little differently. CentOS was acquired as a marketing tool to sell support contracts. RedHat was acquired by IBM because selling support contracts no longer works as an open source software business model. It was a rescue operation (on both sides), really. In a twisted way, it's a success story for OSS. The software is so good and its main users so competent that the support contract has moved from being the value to the value-add. (aside) Unfortunately, this is the same thing driving the adoption of all of these new split licenses, which I don't think is a positive direction. (aside): This is actually the second demonstration of this. The first was when Rackspace got rid of its world-class support organization in a race to compete on costs.