4 ms·

>> "These are people who", the CentOS team said, "never called, never write, they don't interact with us." So the people for whom Red Hat provided no measurabl

by macksd 6y ago

>> "These are people who", the CentOS team said, "never called, never write, they don't interact with us." So the people for whom Red Hat provided no measurable value beyond the intrinsic value of what you downloaded. The copyright for which is largely owned by Not Red Hat, and thus they're bound by the GPL. Red Hat adds incremental value to those projects and organizes the distribution - they deserve to get paid for that, of course. But they were paid - they are the stick by which all other open source companies measure their commercial success. If you advertise being open source as a good thing, the ability to fork is a feature, not a bug. So the Rocky Linuxes of the world are inevitable and a good thing. Acquiring the CentOS project and then killing it is destroying a lot of community good will and I have no sympathy...

ossusermivami 6y ago
I agree with you _but_ i don't think CentOS would have survived if not for the redhat acquisition maybe they could have in some alternate way (perhaps rockylinux can achieve this?) but the cost of producing CentOS in that form was way too high if not for the contribution of Redhat, Unpopular opionion but i think Redhat probably just extended the lifespan of the centos distribution instead of killing it straight away. (I am saying that as someone who has donated to the rockylinux project)
- macksd 6y ago
  Yeah I'm glad to see that Rocky Linux is being a little more upfront about donating and sponsoring, and that they already have some big sponsors. Granted, it was early in my career, but I don't remember CentOS soliciting support, and I had no idea they were struggling to cover costs until this comment. If it had occurred to me, I would have kicked them a few bucks (and probably convinced an employer or two to do something more substantial). I suppose the Internet makes CDs less useful, but I liked when more FOSS projects used to sell media and merchandise.
  - mst 6y ago
    My collection vanished in one of N house moves over the years but I basically used to buy media as merchandise - having a pretty branded CD on my shelf made me happy even if I wasn't ever really using it as install media.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  If Redhat had announce that CentOS would no longer receive funding, but that the community would be free to take over the project, CentOS would be even more dead. I’m sorry for the CentOS users, but I think the reality is that it’s not a project that many want to work on. It seems to require a lot of resource and it’s an operating used by people who specifically don’t want to pay.
  - macksd 6y ago
    I suspect you're right that most users wouldn't pay, but I've gone to Red Hat's website many times over the years looking for a package that suits me and there's nothing. There's a segment of at least one (me) where they're missing out on some money for doing no additional engineering work. I can get the workstation offering for $299. And then I can support free-as-in-libre software, I can run the same system my customers are running in production, and I get support that's probably better than Microsoft's. I don't really know what device issues I'm going to run into, though, and in my experience it either works or it doesn't - if I have a new wireless device they don't support, I'm under no illusion that my $300 next year will be the difference between them supporting it or not. So maybe I'll get the self-supported option. But that's kinda steep - over half the cost of full support. Especially when one way to be confident about device issues is to go install the community distro (Fedora) for free and see if an old release works. If it doesn't, I'm not betting on Red Hat. If it does work... do I want to start this whole process over again, or do I just want to get to work. Well here's another deal breaker: if I'm trying to run the same distro my customer's use in production, I'll have lots of virtual guests. No can do: my workstation license only permits 1. Let me get the server license and just install KDE myself. The self-support option only allows physical hosts. Let me get the next tier up. Now I'm up to $800 a year, and I, as a developer of software for Linux, am going to have a very unusual use case for them, I think. Should I commit $800 for 1 year of this? Does the server edition run KDE well? I doubt many people are trying that. Now I'm too nervous to cough up $800 knowing it only lasts a year anyway. I could see myself buying a Lenovo laptop with Red Hat pre-installed and skip this, but I would want to be able to run more than 1 virtual guest with the same system - I'm not sure if Lenovo customers get special terms. Or... I can just buy a laptop I think is better from System76 and use Pop! OS. As long as there's something resembling CentOS or Scientific Linux or Rocky Linux for virtual guests, I can get close enough to my customer's production distro that this is still by far the most attractive option.
- tw04 6y ago
  >I agree with you _but_ i don't think CentOS would have survived if not for the redhat acquisition Based on what? I just went digging through the archives (granted I only spent ~10 minutes) because that's not at all how I remember it, and nothing indicates the CentOS team were facing insurmountable financial hardship or asking the community for more support. Either as part of the acquisition announcement or in the months prior to it. https://lwn.net/Articles/579551/ https://lwn.net/Articles/579551/ https://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2014/01/10/red-hats-centos-acquisition-good-for-both-sides-but-ware-the-jabberwock/ https://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2014/01/10/red-hats-centos-acq...
piokoch 6y ago
There are many companies that are growing on free software without contributing to it much, however I would hesitate to add Red Hat to that category. First of all they were one of the first Linux distro (I remember installing 4.2 at home) with Debian and Slackware. At those times making Linux distro was a highly unprofitable business. Companies did not care about Linux at all. Windows, Sparx, AIX, IBM mainframes, etc. everywhere. Yet Red Hat people had a vision that Linux could be a thing in the real World and I would say, they deserve a premium for all those hungry years. Second, Red Hat is one of the largest corporate contributors to Linux kernel. I bet that, for instance, Amazon AWS is making way more money on Linux and open software than Red Hat, yet their contribution is not particularly significant. I am not surprised that Red Hat is not supporting financially something that is a rip-off of their software. A legal rip-off obviously and Red Hat is not suing or spreading FUD about such initiatives, but I don't see any reason why they should financially back them.
- macksd 6y ago
  Under no circumstances did anyone force Red Hat to financially back CentOS, nor did I say they didn't deserve a premium. In fact I said the opposite.
- raesene9 6y ago
  I'd say that the original investors in Red Hat have had their premium for all the hungry years, selling the business to IBM for $34 billion !
  - phkahler 6y ago
    Sure, but IBM is going to want something for their $34B. Presumably they had a plan for getting that return prior to the purchase. Obviously it's not going according to plan now - they had a plan for CentOS and instead it has been destroyed. If I were IBM, I'd be taking a step back to understand things better before screwing things up more, because there is obviously a disconnect. I think the IBM Redhat purchase could have been a very good thing if handled properly. CentOS was actually a feature of RHEL in a way, but no more.
- 6y ago

by macksd 6y ago

ossusermivami 6y ago

I agree with you _but_ i don't think CentOS would have survived if not for the redhat acquisition maybe they could have in some alternate way (perhaps rockylinux can achieve this?) but the cost of producing CentOS in that form was way too high if not for the contribution of Redhat, Unpopular opionion but i think Redhat probably just extended the lifespan of the centos distribution instead of killing it straight away. (I am saying that as someone who has donated to the rockylinux project)

macksd 6y ago
Yeah I'm glad to see that Rocky Linux is being a little more upfront about donating and sponsoring, and that they already have some big sponsors. Granted, it was early in my career, but I don't remember CentOS soliciting support, and I had no idea they were struggling to cover costs until this comment. If it had occurred to me, I would have kicked them a few bucks (and probably convinced an employer or two to do something more substantial). I suppose the Internet makes CDs less useful, but I liked when more FOSS projects used to sell media and merchandise.
- mst 6y ago
  My collection vanished in one of N house moves over the years but I basically used to buy media as merchandise - having a pretty branded CD on my shelf made me happy even if I wasn't ever really using it as install media.
mrweasel 6y ago
If Redhat had announce that CentOS would no longer receive funding, but that the community would be free to take over the project, CentOS would be even more dead. I’m sorry for the CentOS users, but I think the reality is that it’s not a project that many want to work on. It seems to require a lot of resource and it’s an operating used by people who specifically don’t want to pay.
- macksd 6y ago
  I suspect you're right that most users wouldn't pay, but I've gone to Red Hat's website many times over the years looking for a package that suits me and there's nothing. There's a segment of at least one (me) where they're missing out on some money for doing no additional engineering work. I can get the workstation offering for $299. And then I can support free-as-in-libre software, I can run the same system my customers are running in production, and I get support that's probably better than Microsoft's. I don't really know what device issues I'm going to run into, though, and in my experience it either works or it doesn't - if I have a new wireless device they don't support, I'm under no illusion that my $300 next year will be the difference between them supporting it or not. So maybe I'll get the self-supported option. But that's kinda steep - over half the cost of full support. Especially when one way to be confident about device issues is to go install the community distro (Fedora) for free and see if an old release works. If it doesn't, I'm not betting on Red Hat. If it does work... do I want to start this whole process over again, or do I just want to get to work. Well here's another deal breaker: if I'm trying to run the same distro my customer's use in production, I'll have lots of virtual guests. No can do: my workstation license only permits 1. Let me get the server license and just install KDE myself. The self-support option only allows physical hosts. Let me get the next tier up. Now I'm up to $800 a year, and I, as a developer of software for Linux, am going to have a very unusual use case for them, I think. Should I commit $800 for 1 year of this? Does the server edition run KDE well? I doubt many people are trying that. Now I'm too nervous to cough up $800 knowing it only lasts a year anyway. I could see myself buying a Lenovo laptop with Red Hat pre-installed and skip this, but I would want to be able to run more than 1 virtual guest with the same system - I'm not sure if Lenovo customers get special terms. Or... I can just buy a laptop I think is better from System76 and use Pop! OS. As long as there's something resembling CentOS or Scientific Linux or Rocky Linux for virtual guests, I can get close enough to my customer's production distro that this is still by far the most attractive option.
tw04 6y ago
>I agree with you _but_ i don't think CentOS would have survived if not for the redhat acquisition Based on what? I just went digging through the archives (granted I only spent ~10 minutes) because that's not at all how I remember it, and nothing indicates the CentOS team were facing insurmountable financial hardship or asking the community for more support. Either as part of the acquisition announcement or in the months prior to it. https://lwn.net/Articles/579551/ https://lwn.net/Articles/579551/ https://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2014/01/10/red-hats-centos-acquisition-good-for-both-sides-but-ware-the-jabberwock/ https://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2014/01/10/red-hats-centos-acq...

piokoch 6y ago

There are many companies that are growing on free software without contributing to it much, however I would hesitate to add Red Hat to that category. First of all they were one of the first Linux distro (I remember installing 4.2 at home) with Debian and Slackware. At those times making Linux distro was a highly unprofitable business. Companies did not care about Linux at all. Windows, Sparx, AIX, IBM mainframes, etc. everywhere. Yet Red Hat people had a vision that Linux could be a thing in the real World and I would say, they deserve a premium for all those hungry years. Second, Red Hat is one of the largest corporate contributors to Linux kernel. I bet that, for instance, Amazon AWS is making way more money on Linux and open software than Red Hat, yet their contribution is not particularly significant. I am not surprised that Red Hat is not supporting financially something that is a rip-off of their software. A legal rip-off obviously and Red Hat is not suing or spreading FUD about such initiatives, but I don't see any reason why they should financially back them.

macksd 6y ago
Under no circumstances did anyone force Red Hat to financially back CentOS, nor did I say they didn't deserve a premium. In fact I said the opposite.
raesene9 6y ago
I'd say that the original investors in Red Hat have had their premium for all the hungry years, selling the business to IBM for $34 billion !
- phkahler 6y ago
  Sure, but IBM is going to want something for their $34B. Presumably they had a plan for getting that return prior to the purchase. Obviously it's not going according to plan now - they had a plan for CentOS and instead it has been destroyed. If I were IBM, I'd be taking a step back to understand things better before screwing things up more, because there is obviously a disconnect. I think the IBM Redhat purchase could have been a very good thing if handled properly. CentOS was actually a feature of RHEL in a way, but no more.
6y ago