We've been using CentOS in-house but shipping on Redhat RHEL. I imagine that is fairly common. I wonder if Redhat asked the guy to kill the project (for a small compensation of course), so the only available RHEL binaries are produced and sold by Redhat. We would essentially be forced to get licenses for all our testing and dev machine, which is not cheap.
I work at Red Hat, and the general feeling I see internally is very positive towards CentOS. Sure, there are a few who would like to be more aggressive about converting CentOS users to RHEL subscriptions, but I definitely don't see any conspiracy to kill CentOS.
Besides, the problems now at CentOS are administrative. If that open letter doesn't accomplish anything, the project could still go on at a new domain under new, broader leadership.
Indeed. And from outside Red Hat, it's hard to see how you guys would even see this as a problem. RHEL is a for-pay product, it's not a free-as-in-beer distribution. So given that there's a market for free distros, clearly RH would prefer people use and target CentOS than Ubuntu or debian.
Bingo. Plus, there's always Scientific Linux as an alternative (full disclosure: I work for FNAL, but not on SL), if things completely fall apart in the CentOS camp. I'd have a hard time imagining a situation with CentOS that couldn't be easily resolved with a new domain and some debate over an organizational charter, though.
> Besides, the problems now at CentOS are administrative.
When the lead developer disappears for a month, without saying anything. Another developer leaves, disgruntled. Nobody knows what happens with the money from donations. Those are very serious problems. The kind of problems that kills a project.
I am sorry for overreacting in respect to Redhat. I know you guys are great. We use your product. (Although we do like CentOS more for us dev people and for testing, because it saves us tens of thousands dollars ;-)
I agree that those are nasty problems, but with the passion that went into the open letter, I believe that the project will survive.
I'm glad that you're not actually soured on Red Hat. And if the best way for you to support your products on RHEL is to use CentOS, that's still a win for us. :)
This is definetly troublesome and suspicious.