Is CentOS Hurting Red Hat?

AlexGr writes "Jeff Gould raises an interesting question in Interop News: Why does Red Hat tolerate CentOS? The Community ENTerprise Operating System is an identical binary clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (minus the trademarks), compiled from the source code RPMs that Red Hat conveniently provides on its FTP site. It is also completely free, as in beer. CentOS provides no paid support, but it does track Red Hat updates and patches closely, and usually makes them available within a few hours or at most a few days of the upstream provider, which it refers to for legal reasons as "a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor." Free support for CentOS can be found in numerous places around the web, and a few third parties offer modestly priced paid support for those who want it."

nope, doesn't hurt RH

I'm going to have to go with "doesn't hurt Red Hat" on many counts.

• There's no such thing as bad publicity.
• CentOS users are likely users who were looking for free anyway so the alternative would have been some other free distro.
• A natural migration path for free CentOS users would be to require more support and since their universe is Red Hat-centric, the "pay for" version they'd likely choose would be Red Hat.

I doubt too many sales are lost here.

And the article's example doesn't really prove the point. So a shop of Red Hat users balked at upgrades and associated fees, and decided to go CentOS because they were a seasoned Linux shop. If it weren't CentOS, it would have been something else. The veteran shops will run Linux for free because they don't need the support, period. And they will find the distro that lets them do that.

(And I'm not quite sure what the referenced Google graph is supposed to demonstrate. I suspect he's claiming the higher count and increase in hits for CentOS indicates more popularity, and lost revenues for Red Hat, but I see it as those needing to do their own support pretty much start with Google. Red Hat licensees will start with Red Hat support.)

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

I tend to agree with you. The article sounds a lot like the RIAA claiming that every illegally downloaded song directly equates to lost revenue, and it is just as flawed a perspective.

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

Well even if we accept that CentOS does hurt RedHat, what can RedHat actually do about it? The GPL stops them from squashing the product (which is exactly the point of the GPL). The GPL provides CentOS with a cast-iron defence from RedHat's legal team. Even if it didn't the reaction of users if RedHat did move against CentOS would be quite something.

I'm pretty sure RedHat hate CentOS, why all the coy legal mumbo jumbo about who the upstream vendor is otherwise? But actually I see no real downside for RedHat. If you want to "learn" RedHat then CentOS is as good as the real thing (for that) and it really doesn't hurt RedHat to have more people skilled in their product.

I actually like the CentOS product a great deal - and it fills the void left by RedHat Desktop 9.

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

They have to make the source available, but not convenient. Currently they make SRPMs available, which makes the life of Whitebox, CentOS, et al, much simpler. If they really hated such efforts they'd just resort to making only tar balls available. Granted it's a short leap from tar ball to SRPM, but it's a step Red Hat doesn't have to take.

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

If they really hated such efforts they'd just resort to making only tar balls available.

They need to make SRPMS available to customers. Its trivial for CentOS to be a customer, hence fighting that battle is a losing proposition.

That said, plenty of evidence exists that Red Hat is OK with CentOS, they are just protecting the Trademarks to avoid losing them.

Nothing to see here, Please move along...

RedHat does *not* hate CentOS... the issue has come up on the mailing lists over the years, and some see CentOS as the "gateway drug" that eventually brings more users to RHEL. Others feel that having CentOS around increases the RHEL{,-derived} userbase and therefore indirectly helps increase the quality of RHEL itself.

In fact, CentOS and Fedora shared a developer booth at FOSDEM this year.
http://wiki.centos.org/Events/Fosdem2007 [centos.org]
http://spevack.livejournal.com/2007/02/25/ [livejournal.com]

Additionally, it would have taken the author of TFA about 10 minutes of reasearch to turn up the FOSDEM tidbit and these little bits that make TFA completely irrelevant:
http://www.linux.com/?module=comments&func=display&cid=1161341 [linux.com]
http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=511 [linuxformat.co.uk]
(scroll down to the RH Q&A) on the second link.

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

"I'm pretty sure RedHat hate CentOS."

1. No, we don't. At least, not most of us -- because most of us actually *understand* the business we're in. That's why we're making all this nice money. If we did hate CentOS, we could make it awfully difficult for them in any number of ways -- delaying updates, hiding marks and making them play "where's Waldo" every release, that sort of thing.

2. The "coy mumbo jumbo" about the upstream vendor has to do with trademark protection, not hate. We don't want "Red Hat" to turn into "Kleenex".

3. Here's a question: why is there no CentOS equivalent based on SuSE products? Think about it.

4. A lot of the significant people in the CentOS community are actually important and respected members of the Fedora community as well. That way, Red Hat benefits from the work of the more savvy CentOS users. That's how open source works, you see.

5. It's Red Hat, with a space. Not RedHat. Get it right, or we'll send you a cease-and-desist letter. (I'm kidding. Probably.)

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

I'm glad Red Hat's folks "get it". Personally, I have no need for a multi-gazillion dollar support contract for my home webserver. But it's sure nice to have one that has the same sort of product support lifecycle as RHEL, and is set up exactly the same. In return, you know what gets specified as the OS of choice on all of my mission-critical boxes at work? You got it - RHEL, with support contracts. Because at work, my boss feels I have more important things to do than compatibility testing and chase around weird OS bugs, and we've been pretty happy with RH so far.

A big thanks to RH for continuing to support the community by not throwing a wrench into projects like CentOS, Whitebox, etc...

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

Please stop having such reasonable and enlightened attitudes.

People here want to see Red Hat as turning EVIL, and you're making problems with that perception.

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

This is a pretty bad comparison. The relationship between SUSE and openSUSE is much closer to that of Red Hat and Fedora than of Red Hat and CentOS. openSUSE is a fully Novell-sponsored initiative that basically functions as a testing sandbox for the enterprise OS, much like Fedora serves as the base for much RHEL functionality. CentOS is a third-party effort with no official backing from Red Hat whatsoever.

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

Indeed! My company will (for the foreseeable future) need some RHEL licenses for the applications which the vendor only supports on RHEL, like SAP. We may run other things on CentOS, but if we didn't run them on CentOS, we'd probably run them on Debian; it's all either common free software or software we wrote ourselves and we don't feel like paying Red Hat for their product. SInce we can, effectively, run one quite similar OS all over without having to pay Red Hat for all of it, we do, and that's why we're not entirely leaving Red Hat. I can't believe we're the only company doing this. If Red Hat demanded that anything we ran that looked even vaguely like their OS had to be paid for, we would run entirely Debian/Ubuntu and start pressing application vendors to support Debian/Ubuntu and we would not be alone, and application vendors would give in, and then Red Hat's market would entirely evaporate.
(Red Hat are not endearing themselves to us any by being further behind the feature curve than we would like, and by generally having quite unhelpful support if we have a problem - we perceive their added value to be small)

Why did MS like piracy?

In the early days, MS gave the impression of tolerating piracy. Whether they did or not it's widely believed it helped them more than it hurt them. Centos is not piracy but it can help Redhad spread itself.

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

And I'm not quite sure what the referenced Google graph is supposed to demonstrate. I suspect he's claiming the higher count and increase in hits for CentOS indicates more popularity, and lost revenues for Red Hat, but I see it as those needing to do their own support pretty much start with Google. Red Hat licensees will start with Red Hat support.

Not only that, but it's entirely possible that people who have Red Hat systems (and Red Hat support) but are looking for a quick answer might do searches on CentOS sites. Similarly if you have an Ubuntu system you may very well do searches on Debian support (or vice versa) since the answers are usually interchangeable.

As you said, if you have a supported Red Hat install, you're not very likely to be doing as many random Google searches in the first place. The rise in CentOS searches since its inception points to more interest in that distro, yes, but that by association also means more interest in Red Hat systems.

I should also note that when I played around with Fedora, I found it somewhat unstable (not trying to start a flamewar here!)... which in a sense made me wonder about Red Hat as a distro. But then my experiences with CentOS showed me how stable and well put-together it actually is, which increased my opinion of RHEL.

What I'm trying to say is, the fact that CentOS is such a solid distro is good publicity for Red Hat, because people get to sample the enterprise-quality polish and updating before they commit to support contracts. Red Hat's secret sauce has never been the binaries; it's always been the reputation for good support. And CentOS adds to this perception of a quality product; a net gain for Red Hat.

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

Too bad your are conveniently forgetting that REAL corporate customers want someone to sue when things go wrong.

That always makes me laugh. I've heard it repeated so many times, yet I don't think I've heard of a single high-profile case where a software-provider has been sued successfully for providing a defective product.

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

It's not so much that they want someone to sue, but companies have to demonstrate that they took care to avoid unnecessary losses. Having a support contract with a company such as Redhat goes a long way to absolving managers of responsibility if something bad happens.

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

'I swear I am going to find the dude who invented the "blog" and kick him in the nuts. It has resulted in nothing but an endless crapshoot of self-rightious wankers who get off listening to themselves spew garbage on topics which they have not the slightest clue.'

I'm going to take a guess and say you've never seen Usenet, have you?

Re:nope, doesn't hurt RH

I don't know what kind of corporations you tend to work for, but every one I have ever worked for has considered OS licences part of the cost of doing business. They have no issue at all buying thousands of Windows licences, or a handful of $10,000 Oracle licences, why would they care about $100 RedHat licences? They really, truly don't. Besides, they're afraid of "free" things and that includes CentOS. They really like things that come with support, even if it's redundant and they have their own in-house team of developers. I've never worked at a company that whined about the cost of RedHat, most of them consider it remarkably cheap and an excellent bargain.

Because they don't have any choice?

I would have thought that would have been obvious... maybe I'll go RTFA now.

Simple: Support

The type of organizations that want Red Hat Enterprise Linux want it for the support Red Hat offers. Take that away and there's not really any competition.

Re:Simple: Support

How the hell did this get modded up??

Lets check the facts:
1) It's an AC
2) Claims he has important job managing unknown fortune 500 company
3) Claims Redhat support sucks because they have bugs in Evolution (owned by Novell mind you)
4) Complains that because their support doesn't rip apart the code on the fly to try and apply fixes that may or may not work instead of filing proper bug reports to dev, that they are not support but just accepting bug reports.
[aolguy]You've got Bullshit![/aolguy]

why???

"Why does Red Hat tolerate CentOS?"

um...because they have too?!

"open source" look it up on wikipedia...on second thought...

Because it's essentially advertising?

CentOS essentially acts as advertising for the Enterprise RedHat editions. It allows sysadmins to stick with the same familiar set of tools on both systems where it is considered desirable to have a support contract and systems where this is less of an issue.

RedHat can't do much to curb this anyway - most of what they produce is standing on the shoulders of other GPL software - but if they did, I'd imagine we'd see a commensurate rise in the use of Debian, Ubuntu and (gasp!) SuSE/OpenSuSE.

A little matter of the GPL

It is a bit of an asinine question why Red Hat "tolerates" CentOS. Red Hat has no option here--nor should they. By distributing code or binaries that were created by people other than Red Hat, and licensed under GPL, Red Hat has explicitly agreed that CentOS (or anyone) has the right to do the same.

Red Hat is welcome to hold whatever opinion they want on whether they *like* CentOS to do what they do... but in the end, it's none of their damn business how someone else decides to distribute GPL'd code (within the license terms, of course... Red Hat is also a creator of a significant body of GPL code).

Re:No it isn't

Not entirely correct. Installation scripts and interfaces definition files must be included. Access to CVS/CVN of the code without these would not satisfy the GPL (v2).

"The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source
code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any
associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to
control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a
special exception, the source code distributed need not include
anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the
operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
itself accompanies the executable.

Centos brings back the 'play at home'

I looked into RHEL when they dropped support for RH 8/9, and they wanted far more money than I was willing to pay to kick around the tires at home or on my development box. When time came to look at 'enterprise' grade distributions, SuSE made it much easier on the developers. Fast forward and I found that I never bothered to even try RHEL 3, 4, and 5. Same went for Oracle's branded version. With no easy way to patch and having to deal with accounting to get a license, meh.

What changed it for me was Centos. I found that I could use the free as in beer versions for all my personal/internal needs, and it was so dang close to OEL and RHEL it became a no-brainer for testing and some dev work. With the internal blessings from our side that our code would work, QA did the formal testing on the branded versions of Linux. Folks running our product, of course, would want OS support - so they purchased the formal 'supported' OS from the commercial vendors. I suspect Centos is saving RHEL/OEL sales that might have gone to Ubuntu or other variants.

Re:Doesn't hurt them at all.....

Yeah when I was doing a Computer related degree in College they used CentOS because of that fact. The thing is you're more likely to encounter RHEL than Debian, Ubuntu and such for server work. They exploited the fact that CentOS was a free version of RHEL and now RHEL has about 20-30 more people with college degrees that have been introduced to their work.

Myself I've used Ubuntu series of Linux on my home machine because its better for desktops but if I were to run a server I'd probably choose CentOS for myself (or a small business), RHEL if I had a big budget in a major company.

Umm, that's the point

Did we miss the point of the GPL? The instance of the software is owned by the user. They can do what they want with it. If they feel like doing everything on their own, they can do so (CentOS). If they want to pay someone else to make their life easier, they can do so (RedHat). RedHat knows this. "Choosing" to tolerate is the one choice RedHat doesn't have: If RedHat wants to use GPL'd software, they have to let other people play by the same rules they do. CentOS isn't going to hurt RedHat any more than Debian does.

CentOS to RH migration

One of the things that makes CentOS a clear winner is that because it is a completely compatible recompilation of RH, going from a test CentOS install to a fully supported RH entitlement is very easy. Thus I install CentOS initially on all my servers initially and then when I put them into production, I convert them to RHEL and buy an entitlement for them. Some of my less important servers remain CentOS. One of the main reasons for converting my servers to RHEL is that I can watch over them all, in terms of patches and security eratta, from the RHN.

In other cases, I can convert a RHEL box to CentOS, then build the replacement server with its entitlement, allowing me to keep the original server in production for a few weeks or months while the new server is ramped up.

So if anything CentOS actually increases RH usage because it is so easy to, at any time, buy entitlements from RH, convert the CentOS machines, and get whatever level of support you deem necessary at the time.

Re:CentOS to RH migration

CentOS also has a much larger set of available binary software packages than redhat.

Of course, you can use those packages with either redhat or CentOS. So while CentOS benefits from all of redhat's core OS work, Redhat benefits from all of CentOS's package maintenance work.

Without a doubt, each project benefits the other directly.

Huh?

That's like asking why I "tolerate" the speed limit, or why I tolerate my bank demanding I pay my mortgage after signing the contract to do so (okay, so those are kind of crappy examples). Their product is licensed such that CentOS can and (I must say I am very grateful for) does make use of the source code. What's the problem? It's not as though RedHat has any say in the matter. The article even points out; "After all, the vast majority of the packages in RHEL were not created by Red Hat, and they are all governed by the GPL, which is absolutely clear about the obligation to redistribute code." Well duh! Someone could just as easily claim that MySQL is losing money because distro XYZ includes it when the end user could be paying MySQL for installation and configuration support. And so on. The article is basically drivel IMO by someone who comprehends what the GPL is, but doesn't "get it" or the real value it represents.

Redhat support

I work from a company that runs most of its products on top of Redhat EL3 and EL4. While there is something to be said about Redhat's quality of support- for inhouse development wortk it isn't so important. Its value comes form supporting our customers at an OS level alleviating us from supporting the OS. (We require our customers to purchase Redhat support contracts). What I believe _is_ hurting redhat is how their sales department insists that making copies of Redhat is illegal. We have been told time and time again that it is illegal for us to run copies of Redhat that are not paid for within our support contract. The truth is- as long as you aren't expecting support for the unpaid for copies and you are not selling them to other companies (alone or as part of your product, because of redhat trademarks) it is fine to use as many inhouse copies as you want. It took me monthes to convince management at our company that Redhat Licensing is completely different beast than, say, Windows Server licensing while at the same time fighting a battle with the software programmers trying to convince them that Linux is _not_ freeware. The concept of GPL'd software seems to be lost on members of the IT management sector. CentOS has become a good inhouse alternative to redhat since it is binary compatible, but it does not displace any copies of Redhat sold with our product. So, while Redhat may be losing some marketshare for inhouse deployments, they are only losing cusotomers that didn't want the support or that they were essentially *lying* to by requiring them to purchase licenses they were not obligated to purchase.

Wrong question

You might ask just as well why the Linux community tolerates RedHat.
It's the way it's supposed to work.
On the other hand, the only reason why CentOS exists is that RHEL can't be downloaded for free like the older versions. If RedHat wanted to kill CentOS they would just have to allow that.

Because they're not the a record company?

Red Hat probably realises that people using CentOS are people who may just like it so much they they come back for more, and since they don't make their money on the software, but rather supporting it, CentOS just means more potential customers in the long run...

Some companies are control freaks who prefer to sue potential customers, Red Hat has picked a slightly more sane aproach.

A Very Tough Business

RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora are all competing brands under the same umbrella. Fedora is great for cutting edge developers and home users. CentOS is good for people who desire the better tested software. RHEL is targeted at enterprises (hence the 'E' in the acronym) who need things working all the time (99.9999%). The three different markets are comparable to the different brands offered by Microsoft (Server, Workstation, Home). The only difference is that Red Hat doesn't make any money from CentOS or Fedora.

But take a step back and think about Microsoft a bit more. Imagine you have a business laptop which was provided to you by your company. It runs 2000 or XP or (god forbid) Vista and the company has a site license for you to run that software. Microsoft is happy to slash margins for the individual site license which you have as long as they can continue to service the servers and infrastructure which run the business critical systems of your company. Similarly, if you are a developer or home user... your copy of Windows came from an OEM or you pirated it. Sure, Microsoft gets money from Dell and the other OEMs... but (I imagine) so do the Linux companies who have been able to get involved in that method of distribution.

In the end, you help Red Hat by using CentOS or Fedora just like you help Microsoft by using pirated Windows. Simple enough?