On 2014/01/15 15:27, Patrick J. LoPresti wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 2:06 PM, David Sommerseth <[log in to unmask]> 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
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