Red Hat, Inc Aquires CentOS

[ramnet]

Red Hat, Inc has announced that it has acquired CentOS.

http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/ce...ry/020100.html

http://www.redhat.com/about/news/pre...os-join-forces

CentOS also has updated their website, http://www.centos.org/

Should be interesting to see what everyone's reaction to this news is since CentOS is heavily used in the web hosting industry.

 

[Kakashi]

Saw this just now. Very interesting, still not sure what to make of it.

 

[raindog308]

I'm sure RedHat wouldn't attempt to seduce CentOS just to kill it.

No, I'm sure that would never happen.

 

[Eased]

This just in, $300/yr subscription for each CentOS install now required.

(jk) 

 

[drmike]

For profit corporation buys "free" software...  

These deals usually go bad, even if it takes a few years.  

I never kept up with CentOS business/income model....  So curious why the sale is happening.

 

[tonyg]

These deals usually go bad, even if it takes a few years.  

I agree with drmike, CentOS might die a slow death. Why would Red Hat keep such a competitor around?

In the mean time, it will likely mean a mass migration to some other distribution.

This is really interesting...

 

[zzrok]

Red Hat is positioning CentOS as a middle ground between a very slow moving RHEL and the just-about-anything-goes Fedora.  I think they want to use it to test out new product niches they can eventually bring RHEL into.  They claim the existing disconnect between RHEL and CentOS will remain.  I am cautiously optimistic.

 

[jarland]

Figures. Let's face it. CentOS is a unique distro in that it's generally thought of as the most well maintained RHEL variant for production systems. Either we're looking at the time for Scientific to rise, a new distro to fill it's shoes, or a Debian revolution. I mean there's Fedora but I mean....Fedora is to RHEL as Ubuntu is to Debian. It's not going to be the production distro.

 

[tonyg]

I think they want to use it to test out new product niches they can eventually bring RHEL into.  They claim the existing disconnect between RHEL and CentOS will remain.  I am cautiously optimistic.

If they are going to use as a sort of test bed, then that means the disconnect will be gone.

 

[Virtovo]

Figures. Let's face it. CentOS is a unique distro in that it's generally thought of as the most well maintained RHEL variant for production systems. Either we're looking at the time for Scientific to rise, a new distro to fill it's shoes, or a Debian revolution. I mean there's Fedora but I mean....Fedora is to RHEL as Ubuntu is to Debian. It's not going to be the production distro.

I'd have to disagree with your Ubuntu comparison.  Ubuntu is very much a production distro.

 

[tonyg]

I'd have to disagree with your Ubuntu comparison.  Ubuntu is very much a production distro.

Only true for Ubuntu LTS.

 

[zzrok]

If they are going to use as a sort of test bed, then that means the disconnect will be gone.

Let me clarify.  I think they want to make it easier for the community to add stuff on to CentOS and do the legwork of finding new opportunities for RHEL.

 

[jarland]

I'd have to disagree with your Ubuntu comparison.  Ubuntu is very much a production distro.

Ubuntu doesn't position itself as the enterprise production distro and it has long since lost it's chance to be perceived as such. It is a fine server, plenty capable of production, equally capable as Debian. However, perception is key. Ubuntu takes more risks with package upgrades than Debian and it turns people off. Just like Fedora is to RHEL, Ubuntu is to Debian, more liberal with package upgrades and less focused on the "don't fix it if it ain't broke" philosophy that drives the IT industry at the corporate level. I speak not of what you and I can make it and use it for, but what it is seen as and what it will be. Ubuntu will never be the widespread enterprise production distro, neither will Fedora.

So who would take the place of CentOS if Red Hat killed it? Either Debian or likely none that are currently high on the food chain in the Linux distro world. CentOS earned a unique spot as a completely free distro accepted by the IT industry at large.

 

[DomainBop]

I'm sure RedHat wouldn't attempt to seduce CentOS just to kill it.

No, I'm sure that would never happen.

Based on some of the goals mentioned in the press release (especially the ones that mention open stack and cloud), I'd say it is more likely they hope to milk the open source community for ideas to fill in a few gaps to accelerate the development cycle and keep enterprise clients from wandering off to one of their main competitors named Oracle.  Do they want to kill CentOS? No.  Would they like to kill Oracle Linux's raison d'être and have enterprise clients see RedHat as a one-stop shop? Yes. 

edit:

CentOS earned a unique spot as a completely free distro accepted by the IT industry at large.

CentOS was never really accepted, or put into widescale use by the large enterprise segment of the IT industry .  They use RHEL...

 

[raindog308]

CentOS was never really accepted, or put into widescale use by the large enterprise segment of the IT industry .  They use RHEL...

I semi-disagree.

Two different Fortune 500 companies I've worked for use it extensively, particularly for dev/test stuff.  In a lot of cases, if you're running prod on RHEL, you might do test/preprod on RHEL and dev on CentOS.  Or if you want a "every developer has a sandbox" sort of thing, then those are often CentOS.

However, if you outsource, it's harder to get adoption because most offshore paint-by-numbers support people don't want to support something that doesn't comes with a 1-800 number.

I also semi-disagree about Ubuntu being a "production distro".  It is in the sense that it's high quality.  And if your production is mostly web apps, FOSS stuff, etc. then no problems.  But if you're running specific industry apps, older stuff, big platforms (Websphere, Oracle, etc.) then RHEL/CentOS rules.  Most companies who publish commercial software for Linux write it first for RHEL and maybe for another distro - and then it's typically SuSE for Europe or something.  The Debian/Ubuntu world usually isn't considered.

Again, though, lots of web companies whose production apps are LAMP stacks etc. and for them, Ubuntu is a valid choice.

 

[texteditor]

or a Debian revolution.

A man can dream...

Really though, doubt much will change. We might see some people defect to Scientific, but I really doubt Red Hat ever saw CentOS as a competitor, I doubt much will change about the project (CentOS will probably be organized better), and in the end I'd wager that this is entirely a way for them to brace themselves for an enterprise-Linux-market-dominance struggle with Oracle

 

[VPSCorey]

Oracle Linux

 

[tonyg]

Maybe this has something do with the move?

http://gigaom.com/2012/06/01/red-hat-dilemma-cloud-players-balk-at-new-support-fees/

 

[TruvisT]

For profit corporation buys "free" software...  

These deals usually go bad, even if it takes a few years. 

Very true.

The fact that CentOS is based off of Red Hat means that they are probably looking to profit off CentOS in some way.

 

[SrsX]

So, how long till we hear how much they'll be charging us to use CentOS?