Red Hat kicked off a tempest in a teapot
We’re going back to the future with commercial Linux. In case you missed it, Red Hat apparently got tired of companies masquerading as communities, building Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clones through CentOS code and giving nothing back, not a line of code nor a penny. Some have called it freeloading. I called it a bad idea for enterprises to cut off cash to the company they ultimately depend upon to deliver enterprise Linux.
In the wake of Red Hat’s decision, a range of Linux vendors are trying to capitalize on the alleged dissatisfaction with Red Hat’s mood. SUSE’s Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo decided he needed “to shed as much light as I can on the decision and provide reassurance to the community in general,” which translated into a few hundred words talking about how SUSE cares deeply about open source, etc. It didn’t shed any light on Red Hat’s decision and didn’t provide any reassurance to “the community in general” (whatever that means).