RedHat v. the Clones
So I was reading a post on RedHat pricing and it got the hamsters running around in my brain. I was thinking about CentOS which basically repackages RedHat Enterprise Linux and runs a bunch of mirrors for it’s RPMS. It’s quite popular because it looks, feels and smells like RHEL but it is free to install and update. So you get the benefits of the stability of RHEL without paying a subscription fee - you don’t get RedHat tech support, but there’s all sorts of people who don’t need it. CentOS also runs it’s own support forums which are reasonably active so there is somewhere specific to go.
Anyhow, I was thinking about CentOS which also got me thinking about Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux - which you know I don’t approve of. Obviously, both are legal to do but what got me thinking was that I don’t really have a beef with CentOS but have much beef with Unbreakable Linux. Huh, I thought to myself as I often do.
The difference between them is the price. CentOS being free implies no guarantee of support where Unbreakable - while undercutting RedHat’s pricing still must promise support. This support and cheaper pricing clearly targets RHEL subscribers and would be subscribers. It’s a parasitic relationship that attacks the very host it needs to survive. Oracle isn’t a linux vendor, they don’t really care about Unbreakable, it’s just a tactic in their war on free software. If you’re curious, I wrote on why it’d be stupid to go with Unbreakable Linux anyway.
CentOS on the other hand, I suspect, mainly attracts people who were never going to be RedHat clients. They don’t need the level of support that RedHat offers and/or they don’t have the money to pay the subscription fees. It gives them a nice enterprise level OS at the right price. They can get un-guaranteed support from the forums or just general linux support on the internet - turns out a lot of people use linux on the nets. It may take some clients away from RedHat - but those would be clients who realize they are paying for support that they are not using and would most likely have switched to something else anyway. Obviously, it’s all speculation, but in the other direction CentOS users who find that they do need support may find their way into RHEL’s warm embrace. The lack of guaranteed support makes CentOS seem much less pernicious to me.
This type of action is something that free software is susceptible to. I find it interesting to watch and see how these events turn out and how the system adapts. I’m surprised that it doesn’t happen more frequently - I suspect as free software is growing more and more mainstream and more money flows into it, we’ll be increasingly seeing this type of situation.
November 9th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Thanks for the link.
It’s not just that CentOS “looks, feels and smells like RHEL” — they’re functionally identical. So the RAID driver and management software on my HP servers is virtually guaranteed to work, and I can download RPMs meant for RHEL and use them unmodified in CentOS. That’s hugely useful. The reason I used RHEL in the first place was the certainty that I wouldn’t have to think about hardware compatibility at all.
As for the support you get with RH and not with CentOS, the basic Red Hat Network subscription that costs $349 a year only comes with web-based support with, I believe, a 2-day turnaround. I’m not exactly sure if that’s $350 better than the CentOS boards. I’m not being rhetorical. Maybe it’s much better; I don’t know — an important point being I’ve never used Red Hat’s support website. 12 x 5 Phone support jacks up the price to $799 annually.
I’m also ambivalent about the idea that Red Hat and the other commercial distro vendors are interested only in the high end of the market and don’t mind that CentOS is a free clone. You’re right that Red Hat’s going after big enterprises who need (and are sometimes legally required) to use certified, completely supported software, but on the other hand, this is supposed to be Free Software, and there are a lot of very stable free options in the marketplace. That is, after all, why Linux is popular in the first place. The idea that you *have* to pay for Linux is (or should be) questionable.
Side Note: I wonder why there isn’t a large, publicly traded BSD distro?
November 9th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I think that the guarantee of turn around is what attracts people. That is, the CentOS forums and the internet in general are really great resources but there’s no guarantee that anyone in a position to help you actually will. Googling for problems yields no end of 1 entry forum posts with no replies. I think that’s the draw of the support contract.
You make an interesting point though - I think what RHAT has done is coupled a service with a product. That is, you aren’t really paying them yearly for RHEL you’re paying them for support and also the bandwidth for their packages (which is much less compelling these days). CentOS should never have come about because RedHat should have packaged up RHEL w/out support and maybe with lower priority access to their bandwidth. This would still be distinct from Fedora since it wouldn’t be a community product.
November 9th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
I’m not sure what the right step is for Red Hat. Maybe they should make the OS and the updates completely free and community-mirrored (like Yum) and charge (a lot less, or a la carte) for tech support — and then focus on selling JBOSS and GFS. Maybe they should pull an Apple and add some closed-source stuff on top of all the open source stuff, but the loyal users would probably rebel. Then again, maybe this model is working exactly as they predicted, and they’re comfortable with Fedora and CentOS swimming in the same pool.
November 9th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Yeah, could very well be working just right for them. It’s possible that a tech support-less version of RHEL would drain more clients than CentOS does. Who knows… it’s pretty interesting, though. Can’t wait to see how the Cloud RHEL does.
November 9th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
RedHat support BLOWS. 6 yrs ago I knew squat about Linux and so when I had to deploy it for work, I insisted on getting paid support.
It wasn’t too long before I felt I knew more than the “experts”, and usually regardless of severity level, it took DAYS for anyone to work on your problem.
Bah.
November 10th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Really? Surprising. :( I’ve had RHEL on several clients for years now, but I’ve never had occasion to test their support. Hopefully things have changed for the better, though!
November 11th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Hmmm… When I started reading this I thought it a bit ironic. CentOS is parasitic in a way, but Oracle’s rolling their own distro, with their own bug fixes, and patches, not basing off of RHEL as far as I know. So in essence they’re doing what RedHat has done, which is to capitalize off of community built Linux, by packaging it, and providing support. Now granted RedHat has a longer history in the community, and probably a bit more Karma on that point, but basically they’re competitors to provide support to the freewheeling open-source operating system. Now I’ll agree with you that I don’t like their marketing tactics to denigrate the very foundation upon which they’re building, but marketing has always been fishy. I *DO* encourage competition in the marketplace, so my feeling is go for it.
On the other hand I *wouldn’t* encourage clients to just jump on Oracle’s distro just *because*, as it’s often a *good* thing to have multiple vendors to turn to. That can help keep them honest.
And as one more dimension to the equation, Oracle’s distro is aimed mainly at Oracle folks, for whom it may be an attractive and better option then a general distro enterprise distro for everyone.
Just my two cents…
November 11th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
PS: Maybe the article’s angle should rather be Linux commercial distros versus the free guys, or some such…
PPS: I’m at Oracle World fwiw…
November 11th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Sean, it is my understanding that Unbreakable is actually exactly the same model as CentOS except you pay for guaranteed support. They are simply repackaging RedHat. I would be curious to know if in fact I am mistaken about that or if the model was to start with RHEL and essentially fork into a completely new a separate distro, which would be ok in my book.
Most of what I’ve read looks like what I learned in this article awhile ago:
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS7266264422.html
I would love to know if this is wrong or outdated.
Give MySQL my love at Oracle World. :)
November 13th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I’m gonna blog about this… though I may have to be particularly diplomatic, as I know someone who just joined that team at Oracle. But yes, after some digging yesturday I found out you’re completely right, and I find it a little rediculous. How can that be? I mean the source for linux has to remain open, but why their work at packaging things together? Why should their labor *have* to go back into the stream, so folks can mooch off of it? That’s hard to stomach.
And yep, I did go the MySQL’s booth. Take a look, I blogged about it:
http://oracleopensource.com/2007/11/12/oracle-openworld-2007-monday-dispatch/
I’ll have a “dispatch” for everyday…
November 13th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Heh, yeah, it is a sucky situation. Parasitic and a strategy that if successful kills both products. But I don’t think Oracle particularly cares about that, if Ellison wouldn’t actively love for it to happen he certainly wouldn’t mind…. I’m just saying…