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" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> 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
>>