Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 10:49:51AM -0800, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 10:05 AM, Jos Vos j...@xos.nl wrote: This sounds as if this is bad: are you a communist? This sounds as if you have reading problems. Are you an illiterate? [...] (Always remember that companies, like politicians, do not make statements to communicate information. They make statements to achieve a desired result. Their statements may happen to communicate information, but if and only if it helps to achieve their desired result.) It's probably because of my reading problems that I read this as companies are bad and they are lying all the time. I know it's not said literally, but that's where reading between the lines comes in. -- --Jos Vos j...@xos.nl --X/OS Experts in Open Systems BV | Phone: +31 20 6938364 --Amsterdam, The Netherlands| Fax: +31 20 6948204
Re: [SL-Users] Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
Yasha Karant ykar...@csusb.edu writes: How exactly does a for-profit corporation buy an endeavor such as CentOS? By hiring the key, primary developers, I would imagine. Could RH buy SL from Fermilab/CERN? RH can try (and has succeeded once in the past) to hire SL developers away. However, both labs have a wide and deep pool of technical ability and I don't think RH could begin to exhaust that by this practice. Personally (and please note the various conditional phrases), as long as Debian exists and continues to follow its own constitution, all of these corporate machination do not worry me. My feeling is that the only thing that keeps RH derivatives going is historical inertia and, in only a tiny fraction of the installations, adherence to RH conventions in order to enable the use of proprietary software (aka evilness). If RH's business decisions begin to levy significant costs on this community, comparable to the (low) cost needed for the many talented SL admins to upgrade their experience to Debian, then we will see a gradual draining of the SL user base. This draining will be first seen in those users who are not part of the primary SL target (which is particle/nuclear physics) and so will largely leave SL unaffected at first. If the costs increase further and become prohibitive to FNAL's strategy of respinning RH sources then they will switch to Debian (or some popular corporate derivative, because directly leveraging Debian would make too much sense). If we ever do reach this description of reality, this sea change will occur well after the break-even cost point has been passed unless some charismatic, pro-Debian person takes a leadership role in SL at FNAL and forces the issue early. If all this does come to pass, it will be a good thing, in my opinion. At the very least it will teach a legion of people to laugh at the irony of calling a RH respin Scientific Linux as they discover the relative cornucopia of scientific software which exists in Debian and which is lacking in SL. Okay, enough cloudy crystal ball gazing, carry on with the speculation. -Brett. pgpT9ivve2FG2.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [SL-Users] Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
http://www.centos.org/legal/trademarks/ The CentOS Marks are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. I find it puzzling that official announcements say nothing about CentOS trademarks, copyrights, etc being transferred to Red Hat - as that web page seems to imply. FWIW, the centos.org domain and the centos trademark are still reported as registered to the CentOS board members (according to Whois and the uspto.gov). But perhaps things are still in flux. -- Konstantin Olchanski Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow! Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 09:45:01AM -0800, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action, ever -- is motivated by that goal. That the 1914 Adam Smith and Carl Marx brand of capitalism. Today is 2014 and we have this new profit free capitalism where making money seems to be a distant second priority (if at all). The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this move is going to make them money? It does not have to be an immediate monetary benefit. If you know your product will be cloned or ripped off (by whoever), you might as well beat them to it by doing it yourself. This way you are the one who benefits from the rip-off product. Read this book to find out how the makers of Ovation guitars have done it with great effect: http://www.amazon.com/History-Ovation-Guitar-Walter-Carter/dp/079355876X -- Konstantin Olchanski Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow! Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada
Re: [SL-Users] Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 2:07 PM, Konstantin Olchanski olcha...@triumf.ca wrote: I find it puzzling that official announcements say nothing about CentOS trademarks, copyrights, etc being transferred to Red Hat - as that web page seems to imply. It is also mentioned in Red Hat's FAQ: http://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/#_centos_trademark I find it somewhat interesting how much digging and reading between the lines is required to learn what actually happened here, when it can be fully summarized in four words: Red Hat bought CentOS. But apparently, signing an employment agreement is joining forces and selling your trademark is transfering it for stewardship. 2014 indeed. - Pat
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 2:30 AM, Jos Vos j...@xos.nl wrote: On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 10:49:51AM -0800, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: [...] (Always remember that companies, like politicians, do not make statements to communicate information. They make statements to achieve a desired result. Their statements may happen to communicate information, but if and only if it helps to achieve their desired result.) It's probably because of my reading problems that I read this as companies are bad and they are lying all the time. I know it's not said literally, but that's where reading between the lines comes in. Is reading between the lines sort of like putting words in someone's mouth? OK, this is going to be way off topic. But what the heck, I am on a roll. Oh, and I will definitely be making some value judgments this time. Of course I do not think companies lie all the time. They tell the truth when it is in their interest. They mislead and lie by omission when it is in their interest. And they outright lie when it is in their interest, if they can do so without legal or reputational risk. Quick aside: Companies do care about their reputation, but not for the same reason you or I do. Well, unless you are a sociopath. Companies care about their reputation to the extent that loss of reputation translates to loss of sales. Period. Small companies are often an exception. They are still capable of behaving like human beings, acting ethically and even altruistically for its own sake. Large companies are not so capable, because a CEO's fiduciary duty is to generate wealth for shareholders by any and all legal means. Anything less would be a violation of that duty. Most companies start small and good, but have steadily increasing difficultly not being evil. Red Hat and Canonical, for example, were unquestionably positive forces for Linux at one time. But it is highly questionable whether we still live in that time. I think it is very unclear whether corporate involvement in open source will ultimately turn out to be a blessing or a curse. We are just now entering the later chapters of that story... To summarize my world view: Small corporations are good. Big corporations are evil. Small government is good. Big government is evil. I am still searching for a label that captures this view. I am pretty sure communist is not it. - Pat
Fwd: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
-- Forwarded message -- From: Patrick J. LoPresti lopre...@gmail.com Date: Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 5:29 PM Subject: Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious To: Jos Vos j...@xos.nl Cc: scientific-linux-users@fnal.gov OK, this is going to be way off topic... (more off topic drivel follows...) To summarize my world view: Small corporations are good. Big corporations are evil. Small government is good. Big government is evil. I am still searching for a label that captures this view. I am pretty sure communist is not it. - Pat If I shared your dysfunctional weltanschauung, regardless of how you label it, I would not use a product derived from such an evil source. You have inappropriately and excessively informed us of your opinion; please transfer further rants to a more suitable forum.
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 09:45:01AM -0800, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action, ever -- is motivated by that goal. This sounds as if this is bad: are you a communist? The world runs because companies exist, trying to make money. I even dare to say the open source world in its current form does only exist because companies like Red Hat and many others contribute a lot of work. So, we should not attack them, but support them. In general, yes, companies exist for making money. The way you talk about it (literally every single action, ever) makes the statement IMHO formally not true, but in general, yes, money is their motivation. The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this move is going to make them money? Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion. The best way of debating is saying your statements are facts, yes, but that does not make them real facts. Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as being in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind. As someone else already pointed out: no, you do not get the same thing Red Hat sells. But for some people it may be ok for what they need. And there are other ways to look at it: the fact that clones like CentOS are used a lot is an indirect advertisement for the quality of Red Hat. The fact that there is (AFAIK) no SLES/SLED rebuild does not help the SUSE brand at all. So, there are also arguments against your theory. SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red Hat will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific Linux will be collateral damage. I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am. It is not obvious. Instead, it is a very, very unlikely scenario. But I might be wrong. I hope I'm not. P.S. There are a lot of companies abusing the open source paradigm, stating their product is open source, providing just a tag-less git repository, no documentation, etc. and just selling their product for money as open source (which is in fact the only workable choice you have). Talking bad about those companies is ok for me too, but don't judge too early... -- --Jos Vos j...@xos.nl --X/OS Experts in Open Systems BV | Phone: +31 20 6938364 --Amsterdam, The Netherlands| Fax: +31 20 6948204
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
Remember, every corporation has a legal responsibility to its shareholders which usually looks like (and I quote from http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0119-04.htm because the author has experience as a corporate securities attorney and I am a physical scientist with no legal training), the directors and officers of a corporation shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties with a view to the interests of the corporation and of the shareholders In essence that means, the people who run corporations have a legal duty to shareholders, and that duty is to make money It seems to me that Red Hat has achieved a balance between that requirement and their social responsibility to the community. Clint Clint BowmanINTERNET: cl...@ecy.wa.gov Air Quality Modeler INTERNET: cl...@math.utah.edu Department of Ecology VOICE: (360) 407-6815 PO Box 47600FAX:(360) 407-7534 Olympia, WA 98504-7600 USPS: PO Box 47600, Olympia, WA 98504-7600 Parcels:300 Desmond Drive, Lacey, WA 98503-1274 On Wed, 15 Jan 2014, Jos Vos wrote: On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 09:45:01AM -0800, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action, ever -- is motivated by that goal. This sounds as if this is bad: are you a communist? The world runs because companies exist, trying to make money. I even dare to say the open source world in its current form does only exist because companies like Red Hat and many others contribute a lot of work. So, we should not attack them, but support them. In general, yes, companies exist for making money. The way you talk about it (literally every single action, ever) makes the statement IMHO formally not true, but in general, yes, money is their motivation. The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this move is going to make them money? Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion. The best way of debating is saying your statements are facts, yes, but that does not make them real facts. Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as being in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind. As someone else already pointed out: no, you do not get the same thing Red Hat sells. But for some people it may be ok for what they need. And there are other ways to look at it: the fact that clones like CentOS are used a lot is an indirect advertisement for the quality of Red Hat. The fact that there is (AFAIK) no SLES/SLED rebuild does not help the SUSE brand at all. So, there are also arguments against your theory. SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red Hat will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific Linux will be collateral damage. I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am. It is not obvious. Instead, it is a very, very unlikely scenario. But I might be wrong. I hope I'm not. P.S. There are a lot of companies abusing the open source paradigm, stating their product is open source, providing just a tag-less git repository, no documentation, etc. and just selling their product for money as open source (which is in fact the only workable choice you have). Talking bad about those companies is ok for me too, but don't judge too early... -- --Jos Vos j...@xos.nl --X/OS Experts in Open Systems BV | Phone: +31 20 6938364 --Amsterdam, The Netherlands| Fax: +31 20 6948204
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On 14/01/14 23:59, John Lauro wrote: Your first assumption, although largely correct as a generality it is not entirely accurate, and at a minimum is not the sole purpose. That is why companies have mission statements. They rarely highlight the purpose of making money, although that is often the main purpose even if not specified. What is Red Hat's mission? It is listed as: To be the catalyst in communities of customers, contributors, and partners creating better technology the open source way. Making things exceedingly difficult would go against the stated mission. In my opinion it would also go against making money as it would kill the eco system of vendors that support RedHat Enterprise Linux for their applications. There are so many distributions out there, the biggest way for them to not make money is to become insignificant. Having free alternatives like Centos keeps high market share of the EL product and ensures compatibility and a healthy eco system. If there was not open clones of EL, then ubuntu or something else would take over and the main supported platform of enterprise applications, and then the large enterprises that pay for RedHat support contracts would move completely off. Having people use Centos or Scientific linux might not directly help the bottom line, but for RedHat it's a lot better than having people use ubuntu or suse. Oracle not being free could pose a bigger threat, but either RedHat remains on top as they are the main source for good support, or they do not and Oracle will have to pick up the slack for driving RedHat out of business. and what's left of RedHat would have to start using Oracle as TUV... I don't see too many switching to Oracle besides those that are already Oracle shops. +1 Nice summary. (despite ignoring that Oracle's spin of CentOS most likely is more open than what's indicated here) -- kind regards, David Sommerseth - Original Message - From: Patrick J. LoPresti lopre...@gmail.com To: scientific-linux-users@fnal.gov Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 12:45:01 PM Subject: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action, ever -- is motivated by that goal. The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this move is going to make them money? Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion. Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as being in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind. SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red Hat will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific Linux will be collateral damage. I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am. - Pat
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 2:06 PM, David Sommerseth da...@sommerseths.net wrote: On 15/01/14 19:49, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: - Red Hat (the company) considers Oracle (the company) one of their top two competitors. - Red Hat considers CentOS a competitor. - Red Hat believes acquiring CentOS will improve their bottom line. These statements are not attacks. They are neither good nor bad. They simply are. They simply are pure speculations. You might be right in the first point, based on that both parties are commercial companies delivering competing products. But the rest is pure garbage. At the risk of repeating myself... I refer you to Red Hat's 10-K filing: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1087423/000119312513173724/d484576d10k.htm#tx484576_1 See the Competition section on pages 12-14. Search for Oracle and CentOS. So when I say, Red Hat considers CentOS a competitor, that is a demonstrable statement of fact, appearing in an authoritative document where lies can result in prison sentences. (Unsurprisingly, the mission statement you keep citing appears nowhere in this document. When choosing between words and legally binding words, which to believe? Hm, hard to say...) When I say Red Hat considers Oracle one of their top two competitors, I base that on the same section of the 10-K, where Oracle features far more prominently than any other company, save perhaps Microsoft. When I say Red Hat believes acquiring CentOS will improve their bottom line, that is so blindingly obvious I am not even sure how to debate it. Companies do not make acquisitions for the fun of it. And Red Hat hasn't /aquired/ Cent OS, *Of course* Red Hat has acquired CentOS. SIngh et. al. are now full-time RedHat employees (proof left as exercise for the reader). The relationship could hardly be more clear. Singh does not mention this detail in his own announcement (http://www.karan.org/blog/2014/01/07/as-a-community-for-the-community/). I guess it must have slipped his mind? Or maybe he figured nobody would consider it relevant? Ha ha ha. So please, stop speculating. None of the above is speculation. What Red Hat will do with their new acquisition... Well, that is speculation, which I leave to your deep wisdom. - Pat
Re: [SL-Users] Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 03:27:18PM -0800, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: *Of course* Red Hat has acquired CentOS. SIngh et. al. are now full-time RedHat employees (proof left as exercise for the reader). The relationship could hardly be more clear. Red Hat does not own CentOS, either the product nor the project. Red Hat does not own the various marks. If this is an acquisition it is sure a strange one. John -- Michael Jackson - The first person in history born a poor, black boy to die a rich, white woman. pgpfxE4So1Btd.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [SL-Users] Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 3:34 PM, John R. Dennison j...@gerdesas.com wrote: Red Hat does not own CentOS, either the product nor the project. Red Hat does not own the various marks. Wrong. http://www.centos.org/legal/trademarks/ The CentOS Marks are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. - Pat
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
At the risk of repeating myself... I refer you to Red Hat's 10-K filing: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1087423/000119312513173724/d484576d10k.htm#tx484576_1 See the Competition section on pages 12-14. Search for Oracle and CentOS. So when I say, Red Hat considers CentOS a competitor, that is a demonstrable statement of fact, appearing in an authoritative document where lies can result in prison sentences. (Unsurprisingly, the mission statement you keep citing appears nowhere in this document. When choosing between words and legally binding words, which to believe? Hm, hard to say...) Then mention Centos and Fedora are at the end of paragraphs stating we also, meaning they (at least at this time) is not considered a significant competitor relative to others mentioned. Also, you need to read the entire document. For example, they also list Fedora as something they compete with, but if you search for Fedora in that document you will also notice sections like: Red Hat’s role in the open source community We are an active contributor in many open source communities, often in a leadership role. Red Hat’s participation in the open source development process is illustrated by our sponsorship of the Fedora Project, JBoss.org, GlusterFS and other open source communities. This participation enables us to leverage the efforts of these worldwide communities, which we believe allows us to reduce both development cost and time and enhance acceptance and support of our offerings and technologies. Thus, we are able to use the Fedora Project, JBoss.org and other open source communities as proving grounds and virtual laboratories for innovations that we can draw upon for inclusion in our enterprise offerings and technologies. Additionally, the open and transparent nature of these communities provides our customers and potential customers with access and insights into, and the ability to influence, the future direction of Red Hat offerings and technologies. We are dedicated to helping serve the interests and needs of open source software users and developers online. Our websites, which include redhat.com, fedoraproject.org, jboss.org, opensource.com and gluster.org, serve as substantial resources for information related to open source initiatives and our open source offerings. These websites contain news we believe to be of interest to open source users and developers, features for the open source community, a commerce site and a point-of-access for software downloads and upgrades. Visitors to our websites can organize and participate in user groups, make available fixes and enhancements and share knowledge regarding the use and development of open source software and methods. By acting as a publisher of open source information and by facilitating the interaction of users and developers, particularly through the Fedora and JBoss.org projects, we believe our websites have become community centers for open source. Additionally, redhat.com serves as a primary customer interface, web store and order mechanism for many of our offerings. Future versions will likely mention Centos as they do Fedora in terms of being an active contributor.
Re: [SL-Users] Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On 01/15/2014 03:37 PM, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 3:34 PM, John R. Dennison j...@gerdesas.com wrote: Red Hat does not own CentOS, either the product nor the project. Red Hat does not own the various marks. Wrong. http://www.centos.org/legal/trademarks/ The CentOS Marks are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. - Pat Reading the URL referenced above that is from 2014 (hence, presumably post CentOS/TUV announcement), CentOS is owned by RedHat. How will SL (Fermilab/CERN) or PUIAS / Springdale Linux (Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study) professionally distributed unsupported linuxes continue? Will TUV still distribute SRPMs from which to rebuild a non-TUV supported product? Will only RH CentOS be able easily to rebuild TUV source? How exactly does a for-profit corporation buy an endeavor such as CentOS? Could RH buy SL from Fermilab/CERN? Would RH attempt to influence the USA Congress (lobby -- the USA having one of the best elected governments that money can buy) to defund the SL effort from Fermilab? Presumably such an effort would be more difficult for CERN that is funded much more internationally than Fermilab. Yasha Karant
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On 2014/01/15 15:27, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote:
On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 2:06 PM, David Sommerseth da...@sommerseths.net wrote:
On 15/01/14 19:49, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote:
- Red Hat (the company) considers Oracle (the company) one of their
top two competitors.
- Red Hat considers CentOS a competitor.
- Red Hat believes acquiring CentOS will improve their bottom line.
These statements are not attacks. They are neither good nor bad.
They simply are.
They simply are pure speculations. You might be right in the first point,
based on that both parties are commercial companies delivering competing
products.
But the rest is pure garbage.
At the risk of repeating myself... I refer you to Red Hat's 10-K filing:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1087423/000119312513173724/d484576d10k.htm#tx484576_1
See the Competition section on pages 12-14. Search for Oracle and CentOS.
So when I say, Red Hat considers CentOS a competitor, that is a
demonstrable statement of fact, appearing in an authoritative document
where lies can result in prison sentences. (Unsurprisingly, the
mission statement you keep citing appears nowhere in this document.
When choosing between words and legally binding words, which to
believe? Hm, hard to say...)
When I say Red Hat considers Oracle one of their top two
competitors, I base that on the same section of the 10-K, where
Oracle features far more prominently than any other company, save
perhaps Microsoft.
What further do they say about CentOS? It is obvious that CentOS is
a competitor for OS distribution. Is it also obvious that CentOS is
not a competitor for support. They give a lot of peer to peer sort
of support. CentOS does not give direct hands on professional
support. One can expect Red Hat to deliver accurate, timely, and
detailed support. One cannot expect that from a list like this. At
worst you get conflicting advice and must make an educated guess
as to which advice to follow. The Red Hat business is support of
very stable and well wrung out versions of the tools delivered by
RHEL. The stable and well wrung out versions make the support they
are selling possible. But it's not necessarily that code they are
selling. It's the code with the support as a value added component.
Their 10k should point out something like this. They should explain
how they differ from their competition and why is this desirable
enough they will maintain a customer base.
When I say Red Hat believes acquiring CentOS will improve their
bottom line, that is so blindingly obvious I am not even sure how to
debate it. Companies do not make acquisitions for the fun of it.
The wording here is not particularly neutral, you know. There is a
strong insinuation that the intent is to remove CentOS as a
competitor. Might the reason be what is stated in the document that
was published stating that Red Hat felt CentOS could fill a useful
functional gap in their development and training cycles? I'd expect
a CentOS equivalent of SL6 Rolling to appear if one does not already
exist. This would be an intermediate level build between RHEL and
Fedora. Presumably they'd hope this would result in better testing
for modules and updates scheduled for the formal RHEL release.
Yes, they do expect acquiring CentOS to help their bottom line. But,
it's not a slam dunk the intent is to shut out derivative systems.
Heck, the document revealing this acquisition expected this to make
derivative systems easier to generate. (That results in more testing
for RHEL candidate modules in a relatively controlled environment
very similar to RHEL. That is surely a significant benefit.)
{^_^} Joanne
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On 01/15/2014 11:27 PM, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: Singh does not mention this detail in his own announcement (http://www.karan.org/blog/2014/01/07/as-a-community-for-the-community/). I guess it must have slipped his mind? Or maybe he figured nobody would consider it relevant? Ha ha ha. so, rather than looking at an opinion blog, why dont you go read the actual announcement ? see if that mentions this little detail... but just reading your posts its clear that an accurate overall representation of fact isnt what you aim to achieve, partial out of context trolling is you intent. -- Karanbir Singh +44-207-0999389 | http://www.karan.org/ | twitter.com/kbsingh GnuPG Key : http://www.karan.org/publickey.asc
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 4:28 PM, Karanbir Singh mail-li...@karan.org wrote: On 01/15/2014 11:27 PM, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote: so, rather than looking at an opinion blog, why dont you go read the actual announcement ? see if that mentions this little detail... Do you mean Red Hat's announcement? http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2014/1/red-hat-and-centos-join-forces Or maybe Red Hat's FAQ? http://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/ ... Oh, I see. You mean your mailing list message: http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2014-January/020100.html Yes, I did miss that. Mea culpa. My own interest is in Scientific Linux; I never much cared for CentOS. And I admit to a strong cynicism about what this acquisition will ultimately mean for SL. But trolling? Certainly not. I would have been perfectly happy with far fewer non-researched, ill-thought-out responses. Zero, actually. - Pat
RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action, ever -- is motivated by that goal. The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this move is going to make them money? Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion. Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as being in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind. SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red Hat will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific Linux will be collateral damage. I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am. - Pat
RE: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
Debian is moving to the BSD kernel. How does Scientific BSD sound to you? Jean-Victor Côté, M.Sc.(Sciences économiques), (CPA, CMA), Post MBA J'ai aussi passé d'autres examens, dont les examens CFA. J'ai un profil Viadeo sommaire: http://www.viadeo.com/fr/profile/jean-victor.cote I also have a LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=2367003trk=tab_pro Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2014 09:45:01 -0800 Subject: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious From: lopre...@gmail.com To: scientific-linux-users@fnal.gov RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action, ever -- is motivated by that goal. The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this move is going to make them money? Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion. Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as being in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind. SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red Hat will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific Linux will be collateral damage. I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am. - Pat
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
Patrick, Why do you think oracle's spinoff is their major competition? On Jan 14, 2014 12:47 PM, Patrick J. LoPresti lopre...@gmail.com wrote: RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action, ever -- is motivated by that goal. The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this move is going to make them money? Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion. Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as being in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind. SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red Hat will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific Linux will be collateral damage. I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am. - Pat
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
What spinoff do you mean? Did I miss something? http://finance.yahoo.com/q/co?s=RHT+Competitors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Linux I suppose you could argue that Oracle comes behind Microsoft and Novell on the list of Red Hat competitors (I wonder how Red Hat looks at it?), but I do not think that changes my reasoning nor my conclusions. If you think the end result will be to make it _easier_ to obtain a free clone of RHEL, then once again, I think you are out of your mind. Yes, I am accusing Red Hat (http://community.redhat.com/centos-faq/#_motivations) of lying... Or, more precisely, of being highly selective with the truth. Also again, I could be wrong. Time will tell. - Pat On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 10:12 AM, Andrew Z form...@gmail.com wrote: Patrick, Why do you think oracle's spinoff is their major competition? On Jan 14, 2014 12:47 PM, Patrick J. LoPresti lopre...@gmail.com wrote: RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action, ever -- is motivated by that goal. The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this move is going to make them money? Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion. Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as being in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind. SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red Hat will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific Linux will be collateral damage. I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am. - Pat
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
Your first assumption, although largely correct as a generality it is not entirely accurate, and at a minimum is not the sole purpose. That is why companies have mission statements. They rarely highlight the purpose of making money, although that is often the main purpose even if not specified. What is Red Hat's mission? It is listed as: To be the catalyst in communities of customers, contributors, and partners creating better technology the open source way. Making things exceedingly difficult would go against the stated mission. In my opinion it would also go against making money as it would kill the eco system of vendors that support RedHat Enterprise Linux for their applications. There are so many distributions out there, the biggest way for them to not make money is to become insignificant. Having free alternatives like Centos keeps high market share of the EL product and ensures compatibility and a healthy eco system. If there was not open clones of EL, then ubuntu or something else would take over and the main supported platform of enterprise applications, and then the large enterprises that pay for RedHat support contracts would move completely off. Having people use Centos or Scientific linux might not directly help the bottom line, but for RedHat it's a lot better than having people use ubuntu or suse. Oracle not being free could pose a bigger threat, but either RedHat remains on top as they are the main source for good support, or they do not and Oracle will have to pick up the slack for driving RedHat out of business. and what's left of RedHat would have to start using Oracle as TUV... I don't see too many switching to Oracle besides those that are already Oracle shops. - Original Message - From: Patrick J. LoPresti lopre...@gmail.com To: scientific-linux-users@fnal.gov Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 12:45:01 PM Subject: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action, ever -- is motivated by that goal. The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this move is going to make them money? Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion. Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as being in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind. SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red Hat will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific Linux will be collateral damage. I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am. - Pat
RE: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
Correcting a few statements here about OEL. OEL is free to use and distribute http://public-yum.oracle.com https://oss.oracle.com/). It is used and deployed on more than just Sun/Oracle hardware. The UEK kernel additionally has it's use cases outside of the standard EL kernel whilst maintaining and riding on top of the standard EL user space. As an example I work with Dell on some of the OEM hardware we have them for use and I know OEL is also supported and tested by Dell on their HW because customers ask for it. Likewise for HP. Support can be purchased as well for OEL on any x86 hardware upon which the user wishes to run it. We are spooling up our HELiOS 6.5 spin of SL right now and for a number of reasons will including the UEK3 kernel and a few userspace bits from OEL (EX:btrfs-progs). regards, - Chris From: owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov [owner-scientific-linux-us...@listserv.fnal.gov] on behalf of John Lauro [john.la...@covenanteyes.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 4:59 PM To: Patrick J. LoPresti Cc: scientific-linux-users@fnal.gov Subject: Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious Your first assumption, although largely correct as a generality it is not entirely accurate, and at a minimum is not the sole purpose. That is why companies have mission statements. They rarely highlight the purpose of making money, although that is often the main purpose even if not specified. What is Red Hat's mission? It is listed as: To be the catalyst in communities of customers, contributors, and partners creating better technology the open source way. Making things exceedingly difficult would go against the stated mission. In my opinion it would also go against making money as it would kill the eco system of vendors that support RedHat Enterprise Linux for their applications. There are so many distributions out there, the biggest way for them to not make money is to become insignificant. Having free alternatives like Centos keeps high market share of the EL product and ensures compatibility and a healthy eco system. If there was not open clones of EL, then ubuntu or something else would take over and the main supported platform of enterprise applications, and then the large enterprises that pay for RedHat support contracts would move completely off. Having people use Centos or Scientific linux might not directly help the bottom line, but for RedHat it's a lot better than having people use ubuntu or suse. Oracle not being free could pose a bigger threat, but either RedHat remains on top as they are the main source for good support, or they do not and Oracle will have to pick up the slack for driving RedHat out of business. and what's left of RedHat would have to start using Oracle as TUV... I don't see too many switching to Oracle besides those that are already Oracle shops. - Original Message - From: Patrick J. LoPresti lopre...@gmail.com To: scientific-linux-users@fnal.gov Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 12:45:01 PM Subject: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action, ever -- is motivated by that goal. The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this move is going to make them money? Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion. Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as being in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind. SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red Hat will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific Linux will be collateral damage. I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am. - Pat
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
So I decided to check the Competition section of Red Hat's annual SEC regulatory filing (10-K): http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1087423/000119312513173724/d484576d10k.htm#tx484576_1 (see pages 11-13) Oracle and Microsoft are each mentioned seven times in this section, far more than any other company. Granted, Oracle _Linux_ is only mentioned once, but once is enough to show that Red Hat takes it seriously. Interestingly, Fedora and CentOS are also specifically named as competitors. So I can rephrase my earlier question: How does Red Hat believe the acquisition of this competitor will make them money? (I have my guesses, obviously. Hint: What is Red Hat's strategy for ensuring that Fedora does not compromise RHEL sales? What do you think their strategy will be to ensure the same for CentOS?) Anyway, enough speculation from me. We will all see what actually happens soon enough. - Pat On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 2:54 PM, Andrew Z form...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I meant oracle. Im not sure if oracle is the major competitor in os market for rh. From my expirience it is still windows vs unix in enterprise infrustructure. Speaking of oracle clone - it comes only with oracle products. And even then, not that often. Again these are my observations over couple of yeara and ill be happy to reconsider if you have some statistics to support your point. From what I understand code for free was never an issue for rh. The companys bussines was to _provide services_ on top of open source os. On the contrary, I think that the way to grow the rh bussines is to work in as many open source projects as possible. This way more people are fimiliar with this particular version of linux.
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
Well in general my company uses SL or depending on the business unit CentOS for non critical systems and Red Hat on every thing mission critical, not because they think it works better just because of appearances. If there is an outage on a critical system that effects the bottom line the first question they will be asked by the board of directors is what linux distro it was running on and if director of the department doesn't say Red Hat with a current support agreement then the board knows who to make their scapegoat. If the director answers Red Hat and we have support then they look else where for a scapegoat. Also market analysts look at the distro when they evaluate your projected stock value and they tend to give higher estimates if you can say all your linux boxes run Red Hat.-- Sent from my HP Pre3On Jan 14, 2014 18:01, John Lauro john.la...@covenanteyes.com wrote: Your first assumption, although largely correct as a generality it is not entirely accurate, and at a minimum is not the sole purpose. That is why companies have mission statements. They rarely highlight the purpose of making money, although that is often the main purpose even if not specified. What is Red Hat's mission? It is listed as: To be the catalyst in communities of customers, contributors, and partners creating better technology the open source way. Making things exceedingly difficult would go against the stated mission. In my opinion it would also go against making money as it would kill the eco system of vendors that support RedHat Enterprise Linux for their applications. There are so many distributions out there, the biggest way for them to not make money is to become insignificant. Having free alternatives like Centos keeps high market share of the EL product and ensures compatibility and a healthy eco system. If there was not open clones of EL, then ubuntu or something else would take over and the main supported platform of enterprise applications, and then the large enterprises that pay for RedHat support contracts would move completely off. Having people use Centos or Scientific linux might not directly help the bottom line, but for RedHat it's a lot better than having people use ubuntu or suse. Oracle not being free could pose a bigger threat, but either RedHat remains on top as they are the main source for good support, or they do not and Oracle will have to pick up the slack for driving RedHat out of business. and what's left of RedHat would have to start using Oracle as TUV... I don't see too many switching to Oracle besides those that are already Oracle shops.- Original Message - From: "Patrick J. LoPresti" lopre...@gmail.com To: scientific-linux-users@fnal.gov Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 12:45:01 PM Subject: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious RedHat is a company. Companies exist for the sole purpose of making money. Every action by any company -- literally every single action, ever -- is motivated by that goal. The question you should be asking is: How does Red Hat believe this move is going to make them money? Those were statements of fact. What follows is merely my opinion. Right now, anybody can easily get for free the same thing Red Hat sells, and their #1 competitor is taking their products, augmenting them, and reselling them. If you think Red Hat perceives this as being in their financial interest, I think you are out of your mind. SRPMs will go away and be replaced by an ever-moving git tree. Red Hat will make it as hard as legally possible to rebuild their commercial releases. The primary target of this move is Oracle, but Scientific Linux will be collateral damage. I consider all of this pretty obvious, but perhaps I am wrong. I hope I am. - Pat
Re: RedHat CentOS acquisition: stating the obvious
Very interesting points of view. I don't want to bite off more than one can chew but...in light of what has been written...which interpretation could we give (as SL users) to the very recent setup of a Fedora Server (Working Group) http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Server given the existing relationship between Red Hat and Fedora? hope the question could be seen pertinent (or not too much OT) to the matter SL users are discussing. On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 2:40 AM, Paul Robert Marino prmari...@gmail.comwrote: The only reason Oracle is mentioned is because Oracle is doing what they always did. Providing a platform for their proprietary products and using the free speech software and open source community to make their bottom line look better without contributing back. Frankly they are an old company which hasn't adapted with the times. In a time when even Microsoft has released OS components under the Apace 2 license ( which frankly gives me images of a squadron of pigs armed with liquid nitrogen bombs flying over hell) they are ridiculously trying to hold on to their old model and just have huge amounts of reserve cash and market saturation which won't keep them going very long. Also if you look at the truly huge data warehouses very few of them are using Oracle databases and most are migrating to supported variants of PostgreSQL despite the lack of good training or any real industry respected certification because it works better. -- Sent from my HP Pre3 -- On Jan 14, 2014 19:01, Patrick J. LoPresti lopre...@gmail.com wrote: So I decided to check the Competition section of Red Hat's annual SEC regulatory filing (10-K): http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1087423/000119312513173724/d484576d10k.htm#tx484576_1 (see pages 11-13) Oracle and Microsoft are each mentioned seven times in this section, far more than any other company. Granted, Oracle _Linux_ is only mentioned once, but once is enough to show that Red Hat takes it seriously. Interestingly, Fedora and CentOS are also specifically named as competitors. So I can rephrase my earlier question: How does Red Hat believe the acquisition of this competitor will make them money? (I have my guesses, obviously. Hint: What is Red Hat's strategy for ensuring that Fedora does not compromise RHEL sales? What do you think their strategy will be to ensure the same for CentOS?) Anyway, enough speculation from me. We will all see what actually happens soon enough. - Pat On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 2:54 PM, Andrew Z form...@gmail.com wrote: Yes I meant oracle. Im not sure if oracle is the major competitor in os market for rh. From my expirience it is still windows vs unix in enterprise infrustructure. Speaking of oracle clone - it comes only with oracle products. And even then, not that often. Again these are my observations over couple of yeara and ill be happy to reconsider if you have some statistics to support your point. From what I understand code for free was never an issue for rh. The companys bussines was to _provide services_ on top of open source os. On the contrary, I think that the way to grow the rh bussines is to work in as many open source projects as possible. This way more people are fimiliar with this particular version of linux.
