In Praise of Red Hat

[Hal Ashburner-2]

Disclaimer: I don't work for RedHat, I don't have shares in them, I
don't even use  or support their distribution for any commercial
purposes and I'm not applying for a job there either. Yet IMHO they are
the benchmark for linux companies doing business the right way. Every
single line of code they ever paid for has been released under a Free
License and is available to all other distributions. They don't do
patent deals. I'd be happy for them to make money distributing any of my
released code (not that anyone could make money out of that ;p )

from centos.org

CentOS  Overview
"CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources
freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise
Linux vendor.  CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors
redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS
mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and
artwork.)  CentOS is free."

So here is Red Hat Enterprise Linux minus the branding. Why minus the
branding? So that other companies don't claim they are "Red Hat
Enterprise Support" and confuse Red Hat customers. Every company I can
think of protects it's brand and trademarks as this is their reputation.
If you use CentOS then later decide you do want Red Hat's support you
can ring them up and work out the contract you want. Or hire a third
party if you think its a better deal. You only become a customer of Red
Hat if you think their support is better than the alternative for the
same system. There is no vendor lock-in. In computing that's pretty
impressive.

Red Hat make me feel good as they're proof that a Free software company
can exist, make good money and do the "right" thing by the community. I
say this with even more feeling because I was so worried a few years
back about what I understood they were doing with their licensing when
they started their enterprise vs fedora split but I'm delighted to note
it turned out fine and was largely an issue of communication, my lack of
understanding or both.

There can obviously be no comparison to microsoft by anyone who has ever
rung microsoft for support when they've hit a critical bug. The
appropriate comparison for that is Dante.

If I am ever in the market for commercial linux support I will be
looking at Red Hat's offering first in my comparisons *because* they
have consistently been such an upstanding member of our community.  They
deserve the reputation credit they've earned. Other commercial Linux
distributions would do well to catch up.

Hal

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[Al MailingList]

Hey Hal,

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 5:40 PM, Hal Ashburner<hal.ashburner@...> wrote:

> Disclaimer: I don't work for RedHat, I don't have shares in them, I
> don't even use  or support their distribution for any commercial
> purposes and I'm not applying for a job there either. Yet IMHO they are
> the benchmark for linux companies doing business the right way. Every
> single line of code they ever paid for has been released under a Free
> License and is available to all other distributions. They don't do
> patent deals. I'd be happy for them to make money distributing any of my
> released code (not that anyone could make money out of that ;p )
>
> from centos.org
>
> CentOS  Overview
> "CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources
> freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise
> Linux vendor.  CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors
> redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS
> mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and
> artwork.)  CentOS is free."
>

Unless I'm misled, I was under the impression CentOS had nothing to do
with Red Hat? i.e. it was just a bunch of people who took the Red Hat
source and rebuilt it?

> So here is Red Hat Enterprise Linux minus the branding. Why minus the
> branding? So that other companies don't claim they are "Red Hat
> Enterprise Support" and confuse Red Hat customers. Every company I can
> think of protects it's brand and trademarks as this is their reputation.
> If you use CentOS then later decide you do want Red Hat's support you
> can ring them up and work out the contract you want. Or hire a third
> party if you think its a better deal. You only become a customer of Red
> Hat if you think their support is better than the alternative for the
> same system. There is no vendor lock-in. In computing that's pretty
> impressive.
>
> Red Hat make me feel good as they're proof that a Free software company
> can exist, make good money and do the "right" thing by the community. I
> say this with even more feeling because I was so worried a few years
> back about what I understood they were doing with their licensing when
> they started their enterprise vs fedora split but I'm delighted to note
> it turned out fine and was largely an issue of communication, my lack of
> understanding or both.
>
> There can obviously be no comparison to microsoft by anyone who has ever
> rung microsoft for support when they've hit a critical bug. The
> appropriate comparison for that is Dante.
>
> If I am ever in the market for commercial linux support I will be
> looking at Red Hat's offering first in my comparisons *because* they
> have consistently been such an upstanding member of our community.  They
> deserve the reputation credit they've earned. Other commercial Linux
> distributions would do well to catch up.

Fair enough. I personally just don't like the whole RHEL approach of
entering a serial number and making it hard to download isos (if I
recall correctly). I'd probably rather use whatever distribution takes
my fancy, and pay someone for support if and when I need it?

>
> Hal
>
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[Paul Wayper]

On 09/07/09 20:19, Al MailingList wrote:
>
> Unless I'm misled, I was under the impression CentOS had nothing to do
> with Red Hat? i.e. it was just a bunch of people who took the Red Hat
> source and rebuilt it?

Yes, it's not officially supported by Red Hat, nor does Red Hat spend money on
its development.  (http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=13)

It's led by four guys who take the same packages as Red Hat and track what Red
Hat does with them.  CentOS's main goal is to be the free version of RHEL, so
it tries to track RHEL fairly closely.  So while CentOS is a separate
distribution, if you know CentOS you also (mostly) know RHEL, minus the
branding and the extra herbs and spices.

As an RHCE I can say that if you want to use RHEL but don't want to pay for
the support, use CentOS.  The herbs and spices aren't really enough for anyone
using less than, oh, a dozen machines, to make a difference.

> Fair enough. I personally just don't like the whole RHEL approach of
> entering a serial number and making it hard to download isos (if I
> recall correctly). I'd probably rather use whatever distribution takes
> my fancy, and pay someone for support if and when I need it?

Sure.  Do that then.  No one, Red Hat least of all, is going to have a problem
with that.

(IMO) it's for this reason that they only offer the ISOs on their site alone,
and only if you're trying it or already a customer.  Because to them it's
worth protecting the integrity of that package - making sure that you haven't
got a rogue ISO that's been maliciously attacked.  Likewise, it reduces the
number of morons trying to get support out of Red Hat after they've downloaded
a hacked version of RHEL (or been sold one by a dodgy vendor).

It's important to come at all of this with an inclusion mindset.  Red Hat
loses little from having CentOS around, and nothing that it cares to try and
hold on to.  On the other hand, it gains a whole bunch of people (like myself)
that started on CentOS and thought "you know, I can go and get my RHCE and
work with Red Hat servers now that I've spent the time learning on CentOS".
And Linux as a whole benefits too.  I had a rant in here about the 'exclusion'
mindset but I think you can all sing along to that tune (as long as it's not
copyrighted).

HTH,

Paul
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[Al MailingList]

Paul,

> Sure.  Do that then.  No one, Red Hat least of all, is going to have a
> problem with that.
>
> (IMO) it's for this reason that they only offer the ISOs on their site
> alone, and only if you're trying it or already a customer.  Because to them
> it's worth protecting the integrity of that package - making sure that you
> haven't got a rogue ISO that's been maliciously attacked.  Likewise, it
> reduces the number of morons trying to get support out of Red Hat after
> they've downloaded a hacked version of RHEL (or been sold one by a dodgy
> vendor).
>
> It's important to come at all of this with an inclusion mindset.  Red Hat
> loses little from having CentOS around, and nothing that it cares to try and
> hold on to.  On the other hand, it gains a whole bunch of people (like
> myself) that started on CentOS and thought "you know, I can go and get my
> RHCE and work with Red Hat servers now that I've spent the time learning on
> CentOS". And Linux as a whole benefits too.  I had a rant in here about the
> 'exclusion' mindset but I think you can all sing along to that tune (as long
> as it's not copyrighted).

"haven't got a rogue ISO that's been maliciously attacked"? So if they
put an iso on their front page anyone can download, I should be
worried it has been hacked? I'm not sure I follow?

For what it's worth, I have my RHCE too, and I think their training is
very professional and the RHCE is a great exam. The issue I have is
that essentially, they're selling support, why not just admit it and
stop making it hard to get the software? It seems there are other
companies who manage to avoid the issue of "morons trying to get
support out of Red Hat" (e.g. http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid).

The only reason for CentOS to exist seems to be because it's so
annoying to get access to RHEL binaries? I guess asking it another
way, if I could simply access RHEL isos and updates simply, what would
be the purpose of CentOS existing? If there is in fact no compelling
reason, then it seems like a duplication of effort to me....

I guess fundamentally it seems there is lots of support (or at least
two people :P ) for their business model, and that's great. The more
choice the better right? I just find it a little puzzling is all :D

Cheers,
Al


>
> HTH,
>
> Paul
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[Alex Satrapa-5]

On 10/07/2009, at 00:02 , Al MailingList wrote:

> "haven't got a rogue ISO that's been maliciously attacked"? So if they
> put an iso on their front page anyone can download, I should be
> worried it has been hacked? I'm not sure I follow?

If someone else hosts a "RedHat ISO", chances are it's dodgey. Perhaps  
it comes with a bunch of spyware and zombie processes running by  
default. Who knows. You could spend your time trying to audit the  
package, but who's to say they haven't included broken 'ps' and other  
tools so you'd never know what your installation was actually doing.

What it boils down to is: don't trust people you don't know

Alex




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[Al MailingList]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 9:05 AM, Alex Satrapa<alexsatrapa@...> wrote:

> On 10/07/2009, at 00:02 , Al MailingList wrote:
>
>> "haven't got a rogue ISO that's been maliciously attacked"? So if they
>> put an iso on their front page anyone can download, I should be
>> worried it has been hacked? I'm not sure I follow?
>
> If someone else hosts a "RedHat ISO", chances are it's dodgey. Perhaps it
> comes with a bunch of spyware and zombie processes running by default. Who
> knows. You could spend your time trying to audit the package, but who's to
> say they haven't included broken 'ps' and other tools so you'd never know
> what your installation was actually doing.
>
> What it boils down to is: don't trust people you don't know

Absolutely... but what has this got to do with whether Red Hat make
the ISO available or not? I was responding to a post that said they
(RH) didn't make the ISO freely available because they are "making
sure that you haven't got a rogue ISO that's been maliciously
attacked". What I didn't understand (and still don't) was how Red Hat
making the ISO available to one and all increased the chances of the
ISO being hacked and people downloading the hacked version.

Regardless of whether an ISO is readily available (lots of distros of
linux) or not (Windows) or somewhere in the middle (RHEL), you should
always verify the source media. The implication was that you can't
trust something that's freely available, which IMHO is innacurate.
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