Yasha Karant <[log in to unmask]> 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.