11 ms·

CentOS Project joins forces with Red Hat

370 points by socialized 13y ago

jonathonf 13y ago
A bit more information in the official announcement: http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2014-January/020100.html http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2014-Janua... "With great excitement I'd like to announce that we are joining the Red Hat family. The CentOS Project ( http://www.centos.org http://www.centos.org ) is joining forces with Red Hat. Working as part of the Open Source and Standards team ( http://community.redhat.com/ http://community.redhat.com/ ) to foster rapid innovation beyond the platform into the next generation of emerging technologies. Working alongside the Fedora and RHEL ecosystems, we hope to further expand on the community offerings by providing a platform that is easily consumed, by other projects to promote their code while we maintain the established base." (continues)
- brokenparser 13y ago
  It appears the link has changed (used to be http://www.centos.org/about/governance/ http://www.centos.org/about/governance/ ), so all is well but I wonder how.
- McGlockenshire 13y ago
  Additional useful highlights: > - Some of us now work for Red Hat, but not RHEL. > - Red Hat is offering to sponsor some of the buildsystem and initial content delivery resources > - Because we are now able to work with the Red Hat legal teams, some of the contraints that resulted in efforts like CentOS-QA being behind closed doors, now go away and we hope to have the entire build, test, and delivery chain open to anyone who wishes to come and join the effort. > - The Red Hat Enterprise Linux to CentOS firewall will also remain. Members and contributors to the CentOS efforts are still isolated from the RHEL Groups inside Red Hat, with the only interface being srpm / source path tracking, no sooner than is considered released. In summary: we retain an upstream.
  - pyre 13y ago
    Why would the build, test, and delivery chain be subject to Red Hat's legal team? Did the process to remove Red Hat's marks from their GPL'd source trigger trademark issues?
    - jlawer 13y ago
      I think the problem is that if they missed a trademark then CentOS was distributing Redhat's Trademarks putting them in a sticky legal position.
      - geekowl 13y ago
        This is one of the reasons for being a fully independent distro with no ties to a "corporation". Debian comes to mind, as does Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, a couple of others. Being able to go about your business as a distro without corporate oversight is desirable these days. CentOS now has a "master" where before, the GPL allowed them to simply take the source, remove trademarks, and re-compile as CentOS, getting the benefits of a corporately-funded distro without the legal constraints of evil IP and what not. RH also may choose to play ball with certain organizations that I don't agree with. This may affect CentOS in some way. An indy distro can give them the finger and tell them to get bent. My goal is not money, it's freedom from oversight, freedom to do as I please, freedom to have an unencumbered distro not tainted by the likes of the false notion of IP, legal nonsense, you name it. Debian is growing for a reason. One of those reasons is because it's an indy distro.
        bonzini 13y ago
        I understand what you mean by independence from corporation, but from CentOS it's the other way round. CentOS has always been a "slave" of Red Hat by design and, before this move, the master could even sue it for misappropriating trademarks. Now, QA of packages can be done in the open, because it would no longer be as problematic to ship test-quality packages that still happen to include a Red Hat trademark.
- justincormack 13y ago
  And some more here http://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/#_centos http://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/#_centos
Keyframe 13y ago
So, in general nothing much will change for users? Red Hat is introducing stability by employing core developers to work solely on CentOS and possibly streamlining changes between RHEL <-> CentOS. Or, if you prefer to view it like that, Red Hat is exercising more direct control over CentOS.
- justincormack 13y ago
  The comment below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020134 says build and test in centos will open up, which is great news.
- stock_toaster 13y ago
  > So, in general nothing much will change for users? Sounds like the CentOS QA process will be more transparent.
k3oni 13y ago
I am not sure if i feel happy or not about this. I just hope they don't go the Fedora way on mangling, moving and changing everything around with every iteration. I don't see what interest has RH into Centos except for trying to disrupt the base and push that way more businesses and customers to RH. Maybe i'm just biased but Centos is doing pretty good in my opinion except maybe the late code changes and updates.
- Nux 13y ago
  They wont change much around, I think. CentOS is a clone of RHEL and there's very little that changes around in RHEL.
  - k3oni 13y ago
    I really hope you are right and it will go this way.
- McGlockenshire 13y ago
  > I just hope they don't go the Fedora way on mangling, moving and changing everything around with every iteration. Why would they? CentOS is RHEL, they'll ship whatever RHEL ships.
  - ballard 13y ago
    RH may try to cripple CentOS, gather user statistics or advertise to promote more consumption of RHEL instead. "Keep your friends close, ..." because it's just business.
    - kbenson 13y ago
      More likely they'll provide a more official way to convert CentOS to RHEL and buy a support contract. It's always been possible, and many people use CentOS with the understanding that if anything get really crazy, they can do just that an buy support.
    - McGlockenshire 13y ago
lvillani 13y ago
I really wish that, when RHEL/CentOS branches from Fedora to make a new release, they would also keep and provide a snapshot of Fedora's repository at that time, just like what Ubuntu does when they sync with Debian Sid (i.e.: packages in 'main' and 'restricted' repos are supported, all other packages in the Debian archive are imported and made available in 'universe' and 'multiverse' repository for your convenience). That would work a long way to make CentOS a viable Linux distribution for everyday use. In my experience, EPEL isn't enough and rebuilding packages seems like a wasted effort since they were there when they branched off to prep a new release. Add a somewhat predictable release schedule on top of that (again, in my opinion Ubuntu hit the sweet spot with 24 months here) and that would be the icing on the cake. Heck, RHEL 6 was first released in 2010 and there's still Python 2.6 on that! I know that I could shut up and use Ubuntu (I do), it's just that I like RedHat way more than Canonical but they don't make it easy for me to use and love their products (speaking as a former Fedora user and contributor).
- McGlockenshire 13y ago
  > I really wish that, when RHEL/CentOS branches from Fedora to make a new release, they would also keep a snapshot of Fedora's repository at that time It isn't always so easy. I don't know what RHEL7 is like, but for 6 and 5 there wasn't a complete correlation between a Fedora release and a RHEL release. For example, 6 is mostly based on Fedora 12, except for a bunch of backports from 13 and a few from 14.
  - rodgerd 13y ago
    7 is definitely a mix of bits from 19 and 20.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- 1angdon 13y ago
  OT: Software Collections lets you get Python 2.7 and even 3.3 on RHEL and CentOS 6 :)
geekowl 13y ago
I see this as RH not wanting competition and/or wanting to somehow control CentOS. It's no wonder, honestly, that Debian is gaining in popularity as they are the last of the main Linux distros who control their own destiny. I feel very awkward about this news.
- koenigdavidmj 13y ago
  The absolute worst that can happen is a return to the state of today. Also, CentOS didn't do anything new and creative and visionary that all. Their goal from the beginning was to replicate RHEL with all the non-free bits (mostly artwork and trademarks) replaced.
  - geekowl 13y ago
    The concern isn't to have anything new and creative. That's not always the goal of OSS. The goal is the have free and open equal alternatives to corporate-controlled software. Debian, for example, is likely the last of the truly unencumbered distros.
    - cgh 13y ago
      What about Slackware, Gentoo, Arch...?
    - koenigdavidmj 13y ago
      Tell me what CentOS will no longer be able to do that they could previously.
      - geekowl 13y ago
        The idea is to have a distro with no "corporate" oversight -- an independent distro. This is the reasons why I heavily lean Debian and OpenBSD, because they are independent.
        koenigdavidmj 13y ago
colinbartlett 13y ago
Does this mean we can finally stop referring to RedHat as an unnamed "Prominent North American Enterprise Linux Vendor"?
- Nux 13y ago
  Yes (according to one of the core devs).
  - AlexanderDhoore 13y ago
    I think that's kind of sad, actually. Always made me laugh.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  Explanation below - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020277.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  I used North American Vendor of Enterprise Linux - NAVEL - but it never caught on in time... :/
mergy 13y ago
Now if they can just get rid of RPM I might come back!
- Nux 13y ago
  Do come back, it's better than the competition nowadays. :)
  - BCM43 13y ago
    How so?
    - undoware 13y ago
      I'm not sure what the OP 'mergy' intended, but I'd guess that the intended reason had to do with better ecosystem curation. Under the hood, my understanding is that .rpm is marginally inferior to .dpkg, but not remarkably so. E.g. using cpio instead of gz as the format basis. So by elimination, the only reason to prefer .rpm would be the rpms, if you follow. As a longtime Fedora user and a recent emigre (post-Snowden) to OpenSuSE, I agree that there is much to love about the selection of RPMs available, especially under Fedora. Although I'm sticking with suse for the lightning-fast zypper (still noticably faster than yum or even its slated nextgen replacement dnf!) and well-thought-out snapper utilities. But that is OT.
      - matt__rose 13y ago
        Mostly it's a matter of picking your poison. dpkg allows some things that RPM doesn't, and vice-versa. dpkg does have some nice features (well, features I can't remember, except for I went "Ooo, I want rpm to have that" when I saw it) One thing that dpkg has that really annoys the hell out of me is allowing for user input during the transaction. It makes unattended upgrades impossible
        YokoZar 13y ago
        In general Debian/Ubuntu packages do not prompt the user with debconf questions these days, although there are occasional leftovers in old packages if you upgrade via a terminal with apt-get update. You can define an environment variable, DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive, to force even the worst-behaved packages to never ask a question.
redhatstory 13y ago
In the beginning, there was Red Hat Linux[1]. It was sold in boxes at stores such as CompUSA (remember?) but was also available for free download from Red Hat. Then, Red Hat decided they could make more money by spinning off Red Hat Linux into a separate enterprise-only product called Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which they declined to make available for free in a ready-to-install binary form. Fedora[2] was also spun off at this time, as the free successor to Red Hat Linux that was supposed to be only suitable for home users. Fedora development was/is sponsored by Red Hat but they did not offer end-user support, in contrast to RHEL. Meanwhile, there was demand for a free version of RHEL. Since it was built with GPL software, Red Hat was obligated to make it available in source form, but their trademark policy prohibited anyone else from using the Red Hat name. Therefore, a group of volunteers took RHEL, removed Red Hat trademarks, and called it CentOS. To avoid confusion, CentOS explained the origins of the distribution on their web site. For their efforts, they were threatened by Red Hat's legal department and forced to remove all mentions of Red Hat and even links to Red Hat's web site from the CentOS web site. CentOS complied and began referring to its Red Hat derivations using the euphemism PNAELV[3]. Now, Red Hat has again decided they would benefit from being more directly involved in providing an open-source, freely-available enterprise Linux distribution. We've come full circle. (Flippant depiction aside, I intend no antagonism, but merely find the history of these projects interesting.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Linux [2]: https://fedoraproject.org/en/about-fedora https://fedoraproject.org/en/about-fedora [3]: http://www.pnaelv.net http://www.pnaelv.net
- codezero 13y ago
  I wonder if they are also doing this so they can get an idea of who the user base of CentOS is and also try to convert them to paying customers.
  - pilom 13y ago
    My guess is they are feeling the hit from Oracle Linux's business model and wanted the flexibility to compete directly. Oracle Linux's distribution model is that you can take CentOS, change a couple repositories and make it Oracle Linux. Then if you want support, you can pay for it. With Red Hat, RHEL and CentOS before today were separate products with separate release schedules and separate userbases. This move gives Red Hat the opportunity to act more like Oracle Linux if they choose to.
emmelaich 13y ago
I think Red Hat had to do this, otherwise CentOS would be drawn closer and closer to Oracle.
- Nux 13y ago
  lol!
johnchristopher 13y ago
What would the consequences/benefits be for the Fedora project ?
- this_user 13y ago
  RHEL and CentOS are aimed towards enterprise customers, Fedora is for individual users. I don't think there's any kind of real competition or even overlap between CentOS and Fedora. In addition, Fedora is basically a community project (although led by RH). It seems unlikely that RH would be able to shut down or materially alter the Fedora project even if the wanted to. In the worst case scenario the community could just branch the code and form a new organisation to lead its development.
  - langdon 13y ago
    The Fedora Project is also going through some pretty significant changes. See https://lwn.net/Articles/569795/ https://lwn.net/Articles/569795/ (although slightly OT).
dmourati 13y ago
I've largely made my living off CentOS software. I hope this new friendship doesn't cause CentOS to become diluted or eventually shuttered. Great project run by a very small number of very dedicated supporters. Best of luck to them.
- themodelplumber 13y ago
  My concern is more along the lines of a sudden injection of tons of energy causing the CentOS ecosystem some extreme growing pain. That could filter down to individual service providers' servers becoming less reliable or even just needing more frequent attention, which would be painful enough.
- k3oni 13y ago
  This is my fear as well, i like Centos for what it is and implement it daily on most of the servers i run.
- dmourati 13y ago
  Just re-read the announcement. The third sentence isn't a sentence at all.
akbar501 13y ago
Congrats to the CentOS team. You filled a much needed gap when the Fedora / RHEL split happened. As someone who used Red Hat Linux in the 90's / early 2000's, you had to be there to know how large of a gap the CentOS team filled. Historical background: Red Hat Linux (RHL) was the most widely used Linux distro in the late 90's / early 2000's. Overnight, RedHat destabilized RHL by turning it into Fedora with it's rapid release cycles, lack of back ports, bleeding edge packages etc. RHEL became a closed distro with only source distributed, but none of the tools to easily replicate the build. RHL users (who were the majority of Linux users) were faced with a choice. Pay for RHEL or switch distros. This really sucked b/c RHL deployments were largely servers that were designed for long term deployments. The community was faced with a large scale migration of servers which involved a large population of web and edge of network deployments. This is when CentOS stepped in, created a binary compatible build of RHEL, and allowed long time RHL users to continue with a RedHat-like distro. RedHat has been a major contributor to OSS. However, projects like CentOS have filled very important roles in the Linux and OSS communities. Again, congrats to the team.
rootbear 13y ago
I hope this will make it easier for me to use CentOS at NASA. They only want us to use Linux distributions that are actively supported with security fixes and for some reason they don't think CentOS qualifies, since it's not a "real" company. They prefer us to use RHEL, Ubuntu, or Suse. But if this new arrangement increases the perception of timeliness for updates, then maybe we can start using it and save some money. Edited for clarity.
- hatchoo 13y ago
  Although I cannot personally vouch for it, I read that Scientific Linux gets updates more often compared to CentOS.
- hackinthebochs 13y ago
  Why does it matter? If they have the budget for it what's the problem with spending money on RHEL? I don't see the benefit in pushing CentOS over RHEL when licensing isn't a factor.
jlgaddis 13y ago
I wonder if this will lead to CentOS getting security updates at the same time as RHEL (or very shortly thereafter) or if CentOS will continue to have to "play catch-up". It is for this reason that I moved to Oracle Linux about a year ago when deploying a bunch of new machines. I am certainly no fan of Oracle the company but they were getting security updates out much quicker than CentOS.

370 points by socialized 13y ago

A bit more information in the official announcement: http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2014-January/020100.html http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2014-Janua... "With great excitement I'd like to announce that we are joining the Red Hat family. The CentOS Project ( http://www.centos.org http://www.centos.org ) is joining forces with Red Hat. Working as part of the Open Source and Standards team ( http://community.redhat.com/ http://community.redhat.com/ ) to foster rapid innovation beyond the platform into the next generation of emerging technologies. Working alongside the Fedora and RHEL ecosystems, we hope to further expand on the community offerings by providing a platform that is easily consumed, by other projects to promote their code while we maintain the established base." (continues)

brokenparser 13y ago
It appears the link has changed (used to be http://www.centos.org/about/governance/ http://www.centos.org/about/governance/ ), so all is well but I wonder how.
McGlockenshire 13y ago
Additional useful highlights: > - Some of us now work for Red Hat, but not RHEL. > - Red Hat is offering to sponsor some of the buildsystem and initial content delivery resources > - Because we are now able to work with the Red Hat legal teams, some of the contraints that resulted in efforts like CentOS-QA being behind closed doors, now go away and we hope to have the entire build, test, and delivery chain open to anyone who wishes to come and join the effort. > - The Red Hat Enterprise Linux to CentOS firewall will also remain. Members and contributors to the CentOS efforts are still isolated from the RHEL Groups inside Red Hat, with the only interface being srpm / source path tracking, no sooner than is considered released. In summary: we retain an upstream.
- pyre 13y ago
  Why would the build, test, and delivery chain be subject to Red Hat's legal team? Did the process to remove Red Hat's marks from their GPL'd source trigger trademark issues?
  - jlawer 13y ago
    I think the problem is that if they missed a trademark then CentOS was distributing Redhat's Trademarks putting them in a sticky legal position.
    - geekowl 13y ago
      This is one of the reasons for being a fully independent distro with no ties to a "corporation". Debian comes to mind, as does Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, a couple of others. Being able to go about your business as a distro without corporate oversight is desirable these days. CentOS now has a "master" where before, the GPL allowed them to simply take the source, remove trademarks, and re-compile as CentOS, getting the benefits of a corporately-funded distro without the legal constraints of evil IP and what not. RH also may choose to play ball with certain organizations that I don't agree with. This may affect CentOS in some way. An indy distro can give them the finger and tell them to get bent. My goal is not money, it's freedom from oversight, freedom to do as I please, freedom to have an unencumbered distro not tainted by the likes of the false notion of IP, legal nonsense, you name it. Debian is growing for a reason. One of those reasons is because it's an indy distro.
      - bonzini 13y ago
        I understand what you mean by independence from corporation, but from CentOS it's the other way round. CentOS has always been a "slave" of Red Hat by design and, before this move, the master could even sue it for misappropriating trademarks. Now, QA of packages can be done in the open, because it would no longer be as problematic to ship test-quality packages that still happen to include a Red Hat trademark.
justincormack 13y ago
And some more here http://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/#_centos http://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/#_centos

Keyframe 13y ago

So, in general nothing much will change for users? Red Hat is introducing stability by employing core developers to work solely on CentOS and possibly streamlining changes between RHEL <-> CentOS. Or, if you prefer to view it like that, Red Hat is exercising more direct control over CentOS.

justincormack 13y ago
The comment below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020134 says build and test in centos will open up, which is great news.
stock_toaster 13y ago
> So, in general nothing much will change for users? Sounds like the CentOS QA process will be more transparent.

k3oni 13y ago

I am not sure if i feel happy or not about this. I just hope they don't go the Fedora way on mangling, moving and changing everything around with every iteration. I don't see what interest has RH into Centos except for trying to disrupt the base and push that way more businesses and customers to RH. Maybe i'm just biased but Centos is doing pretty good in my opinion except maybe the late code changes and updates.

Nux 13y ago
They wont change much around, I think. CentOS is a clone of RHEL and there's very little that changes around in RHEL.
- k3oni 13y ago
  I really hope you are right and it will go this way.
McGlockenshire 13y ago
> I just hope they don't go the Fedora way on mangling, moving and changing everything around with every iteration. Why would they? CentOS is RHEL, they'll ship whatever RHEL ships.
- ballard 13y ago
  RH may try to cripple CentOS, gather user statistics or advertise to promote more consumption of RHEL instead. "Keep your friends close, ..." because it's just business.
  - kbenson 13y ago
    More likely they'll provide a more official way to convert CentOS to RHEL and buy a support contract. It's always been possible, and many people use CentOS with the understanding that if anything get really crazy, they can do just that an buy support.
  - McGlockenshire 13y ago

lvillani 13y ago

I really wish that, when RHEL/CentOS branches from Fedora to make a new release, they would also keep and provide a snapshot of Fedora's repository at that time, just like what Ubuntu does when they sync with Debian Sid (i.e.: packages in 'main' and 'restricted' repos are supported, all other packages in the Debian archive are imported and made available in 'universe' and 'multiverse' repository for your convenience). That would work a long way to make CentOS a viable Linux distribution for everyday use. In my experience, EPEL isn't enough and rebuilding packages seems like a wasted effort since they were there when they branched off to prep a new release. Add a somewhat predictable release schedule on top of that (again, in my opinion Ubuntu hit the sweet spot with 24 months here) and that would be the icing on the cake. Heck, RHEL 6 was first released in 2010 and there's still Python 2.6 on that! I know that I could shut up and use Ubuntu (I do), it's just that I like RedHat way more than Canonical but they don't make it easy for me to use and love their products (speaking as a former Fedora user and contributor).

McGlockenshire 13y ago
> I really wish that, when RHEL/CentOS branches from Fedora to make a new release, they would also keep a snapshot of Fedora's repository at that time It isn't always so easy. I don't know what RHEL7 is like, but for 6 and 5 there wasn't a complete correlation between a Fedora release and a RHEL release. For example, 6 is mostly based on Fedora 12, except for a bunch of backports from 13 and a few from 14.
- rodgerd 13y ago
  7 is definitely a mix of bits from 19 and 20.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
1angdon 13y ago
OT: Software Collections lets you get Python 2.7 and even 3.3 on RHEL and CentOS 6 :)

geekowl 13y ago

I see this as RH not wanting competition and/or wanting to somehow control CentOS. It's no wonder, honestly, that Debian is gaining in popularity as they are the last of the main Linux distros who control their own destiny. I feel very awkward about this news.

koenigdavidmj 13y ago
The absolute worst that can happen is a return to the state of today. Also, CentOS didn't do anything new and creative and visionary that all. Their goal from the beginning was to replicate RHEL with all the non-free bits (mostly artwork and trademarks) replaced.
- geekowl 13y ago
  The concern isn't to have anything new and creative. That's not always the goal of OSS. The goal is the have free and open equal alternatives to corporate-controlled software. Debian, for example, is likely the last of the truly unencumbered distros.
  - cgh 13y ago
    What about Slackware, Gentoo, Arch...?
  - koenigdavidmj 13y ago
    Tell me what CentOS will no longer be able to do that they could previously.
    - geekowl 13y ago
      The idea is to have a distro with no "corporate" oversight -- an independent distro. This is the reasons why I heavily lean Debian and OpenBSD, because they are independent.
      - koenigdavidmj 13y ago

colinbartlett 13y ago

Does this mean we can finally stop referring to RedHat as an unnamed "Prominent North American Enterprise Linux Vendor"?

Nux 13y ago
Yes (according to one of the core devs).
- AlexanderDhoore 13y ago
  I think that's kind of sad, actually. Always made me laugh.
pbhjpbhj 13y ago
Explanation below - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7020277.
mgkimsal 13y ago
I used North American Vendor of Enterprise Linux - NAVEL - but it never caught on in time... :/

mergy 13y ago

Now if they can just get rid of RPM I might come back!

Nux 13y ago
Do come back, it's better than the competition nowadays. :)
- BCM43 13y ago
  How so?
  - undoware 13y ago
    I'm not sure what the OP 'mergy' intended, but I'd guess that the intended reason had to do with better ecosystem curation. Under the hood, my understanding is that .rpm is marginally inferior to .dpkg, but not remarkably so. E.g. using cpio instead of gz as the format basis. So by elimination, the only reason to prefer .rpm would be the rpms, if you follow. As a longtime Fedora user and a recent emigre (post-Snowden) to OpenSuSE, I agree that there is much to love about the selection of RPMs available, especially under Fedora. Although I'm sticking with suse for the lightning-fast zypper (still noticably faster than yum or even its slated nextgen replacement dnf!) and well-thought-out snapper utilities. But that is OT.
    - matt__rose 13y ago
      Mostly it's a matter of picking your poison. dpkg allows some things that RPM doesn't, and vice-versa. dpkg does have some nice features (well, features I can't remember, except for I went "Ooo, I want rpm to have that" when I saw it) One thing that dpkg has that really annoys the hell out of me is allowing for user input during the transaction. It makes unattended upgrades impossible
      - YokoZar 13y ago
        In general Debian/Ubuntu packages do not prompt the user with debconf questions these days, although there are occasional leftovers in old packages if you upgrade via a terminal with apt-get update. You can define an environment variable, DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive, to force even the worst-behaved packages to never ask a question.

redhatstory 13y ago

In the beginning, there was Red Hat Linux[1]. It was sold in boxes at stores such as CompUSA (remember?) but was also available for free download from Red Hat. Then, Red Hat decided they could make more money by spinning off Red Hat Linux into a separate enterprise-only product called Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which they declined to make available for free in a ready-to-install binary form. Fedora[2] was also spun off at this time, as the free successor to Red Hat Linux that was supposed to be only suitable for home users. Fedora development was/is sponsored by Red Hat but they did not offer end-user support, in contrast to RHEL. Meanwhile, there was demand for a free version of RHEL. Since it was built with GPL software, Red Hat was obligated to make it available in source form, but their trademark policy prohibited anyone else from using the Red Hat name. Therefore, a group of volunteers took RHEL, removed Red Hat trademarks, and called it CentOS. To avoid confusion, CentOS explained the origins of the distribution on their web site. For their efforts, they were threatened by Red Hat's legal department and forced to remove all mentions of Red Hat and even links to Red Hat's web site from the CentOS web site. CentOS complied and began referring to its Red Hat derivations using the euphemism PNAELV[3]. Now, Red Hat has again decided they would benefit from being more directly involved in providing an open-source, freely-available enterprise Linux distribution. We've come full circle. (Flippant depiction aside, I intend no antagonism, but merely find the history of these projects interesting.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Linux [2]: https://fedoraproject.org/en/about-fedora https://fedoraproject.org/en/about-fedora [3]: http://www.pnaelv.net http://www.pnaelv.net

codezero 13y ago
I wonder if they are also doing this so they can get an idea of who the user base of CentOS is and also try to convert them to paying customers.
- pilom 13y ago
  My guess is they are feeling the hit from Oracle Linux's business model and wanted the flexibility to compete directly. Oracle Linux's distribution model is that you can take CentOS, change a couple repositories and make it Oracle Linux. Then if you want support, you can pay for it. With Red Hat, RHEL and CentOS before today were separate products with separate release schedules and separate userbases. This move gives Red Hat the opportunity to act more like Oracle Linux if they choose to.

emmelaich 13y ago

I think Red Hat had to do this, otherwise CentOS would be drawn closer and closer to Oracle.

Nux 13y ago
lol!

johnchristopher 13y ago

What would the consequences/benefits be for the Fedora project ?

this_user 13y ago
RHEL and CentOS are aimed towards enterprise customers, Fedora is for individual users. I don't think there's any kind of real competition or even overlap between CentOS and Fedora. In addition, Fedora is basically a community project (although led by RH). It seems unlikely that RH would be able to shut down or materially alter the Fedora project even if the wanted to. In the worst case scenario the community could just branch the code and form a new organisation to lead its development.
- langdon 13y ago
  The Fedora Project is also going through some pretty significant changes. See https://lwn.net/Articles/569795/ https://lwn.net/Articles/569795/ (although slightly OT).

dmourati 13y ago

I've largely made my living off CentOS software. I hope this new friendship doesn't cause CentOS to become diluted or eventually shuttered. Great project run by a very small number of very dedicated supporters. Best of luck to them.

themodelplumber 13y ago
My concern is more along the lines of a sudden injection of tons of energy causing the CentOS ecosystem some extreme growing pain. That could filter down to individual service providers' servers becoming less reliable or even just needing more frequent attention, which would be painful enough.
k3oni 13y ago
This is my fear as well, i like Centos for what it is and implement it daily on most of the servers i run.
dmourati 13y ago
Just re-read the announcement. The third sentence isn't a sentence at all.

akbar501 13y ago

Congrats to the CentOS team. You filled a much needed gap when the Fedora / RHEL split happened. As someone who used Red Hat Linux in the 90's / early 2000's, you had to be there to know how large of a gap the CentOS team filled. Historical background: Red Hat Linux (RHL) was the most widely used Linux distro in the late 90's / early 2000's. Overnight, RedHat destabilized RHL by turning it into Fedora with it's rapid release cycles, lack of back ports, bleeding edge packages etc. RHEL became a closed distro with only source distributed, but none of the tools to easily replicate the build. RHL users (who were the majority of Linux users) were faced with a choice. Pay for RHEL or switch distros. This really sucked b/c RHL deployments were largely servers that were designed for long term deployments. The community was faced with a large scale migration of servers which involved a large population of web and edge of network deployments. This is when CentOS stepped in, created a binary compatible build of RHEL, and allowed long time RHL users to continue with a RedHat-like distro. RedHat has been a major contributor to OSS. However, projects like CentOS have filled very important roles in the Linux and OSS communities. Again, congrats to the team.

rootbear 13y ago

I hope this will make it easier for me to use CentOS at NASA. They only want us to use Linux distributions that are actively supported with security fixes and for some reason they don't think CentOS qualifies, since it's not a "real" company. They prefer us to use RHEL, Ubuntu, or Suse. But if this new arrangement increases the perception of timeliness for updates, then maybe we can start using it and save some money. Edited for clarity.

hatchoo 13y ago
Although I cannot personally vouch for it, I read that Scientific Linux gets updates more often compared to CentOS.
hackinthebochs 13y ago
Why does it matter? If they have the budget for it what's the problem with spending money on RHEL? I don't see the benefit in pushing CentOS over RHEL when licensing isn't a factor.

jlgaddis 13y ago

I wonder if this will lead to CentOS getting security updates at the same time as RHEL (or very shortly thereafter) or if CentOS will continue to have to "play catch-up". It is for this reason that I moved to Oracle Linux about a year ago when deploying a bunch of new machines. I am certainly no fan of Oracle the company but they were getting security updates out much quicker than CentOS.