[geekowl]

I see this as RH not wanting competition and/or wanting to somehow control CentOS. It's no wonder, honestly, that Debian is gaining in popularity as they are the last of the main Linux distros who control their own destiny. I feel very awkward about this news.

[keithpeter]

I know what you mean about 'feeling awkward'.

But think: how could Red Hat 'control' CentOS when CentOS is simply a clone of RHEL produced from the srpms that Red Hat have to distribute under the terms of the GPL?

As Karanbir says, 'we retain an upstream'.

There are other clones: Scientific Linux (CERN/Fermilabs and a lot of Universities) and Springdale Linux (Princeton/Institute of Advanced Study) are two other RHEL clones. And of course, there is Oracle Linux, a third clone, and one that provides commercial support.

[koenigdavidmj]

The absolute worst that can happen is a return to the state of today. Also, CentOS didn't do anything new and creative and visionary that all. Their goal from the beginning was to replicate RHEL with all the non-free bits (mostly artwork and trademarks) replaced.

[geekowl]

The concern isn't to have anything new and creative. That's not always the goal of OSS. The goal is the have free and open equal alternatives to corporate-controlled software. Debian, for example, is likely the last of the truly unencumbered distros.

[cgh]

What about Slackware, Gentoo, Arch...?

[koenigdavidmj]

Tell me what CentOS will no longer be able to do that they could previously.

[geekowl]

The idea is to have a distro with no "corporate" oversight -- an independent distro. This is the reasons why I heavily lean Debian and OpenBSD, because they are independent.

[sciurus]

Since CentOS blindly reproduced a product generated by a corporation, I'm having a hard time understanding your argument.

[koenigdavidmj]

I'm trying to get you to describe your reasoning about what actually differs if a corporation is involved. "Independent" is not in itself a word that confers any benefit.

[justincormack]

Most Redhat customers use Centos (eg for build, test machines etc), and many Centos users are potential RH customers. Fedora does not fill the same niche, so having all three makes sense.

[Nux]

Don't worry, be happy. CentOS was never real competition to RH, instead it was providing an invaluable ecosystem. In a way RH always controlled CentOS since the latter is just a clone.

If CentOS gets shitty you can always move to SL, Puias etc or make your own.

[keithpeter]

And if you need multimedia codecs, a version of VLC that works properly, and if you live somewhere where it is legal to play a DVD on a machine running linux, there is the Nux desktop repository.