How is RHEL Free?
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@scottalanmiller said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
@dashrender said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
But, they cloak that fact behind their support contracts, making the install media challenging to get directly from them.
Making a free product and providing a download service for a free product are totally different things. There is no cloaking or anything of the sort. RHEL is free, always has been. That THEY don't provide you a download link to it is neither here nor there. That THEY don't advertise this and make a big deal of it is neither here nor there. That they only have a marketing and sales team to sell support doesn't constitute a cloak.
Feel free to "fork" this..
If "RHEL is free, always has been"...why not this option instead of CentOS -
Was going to post some things on the original topic, will wait for @FATeknollogee comments to be forked out @scottalanmiller
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@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
@dashrender said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
But, they cloak that fact behind their support contracts, making the install media challenging to get directly from them.
Making a free product and providing a download service for a free product are totally different things. There is no cloaking or anything of the sort. RHEL is free, always has been. That THEY don't provide you a download link to it is neither here nor there. That THEY don't advertise this and make a big deal of it is neither here nor there. That they only have a marketing and sales team to sell support doesn't constitute a cloak.
Feel free to "fork" this..
If "RHEL is free, always has been"...why not this option instead of CentOSCentOS is RHEL free. The names are essentially just names of when it is free or not free. They aren't two separate products. Technically some logos and markers are different, but the actual OS is literally identical. They are the same product, from the same vendor. There are only two names for historical reasons.
Because RHEL is really a reference to being licensed for support and not to the OS specifically, it creates on odd situation. If you get a free copy of RHEL, we call it CentOS. So is RHEL free? Well, is a $.99 Hamburger free? No, we'd call it a free hamburger. But is RHEL available for free, yes. Because the name refers to it being paid for, it's a linguistic problem.
But bottom line, RHEL is free, period. It's made of components that must be available for free. RH doesn't have an option to keep it from being free. Even before RH made a point of providing it for free, CentOS and Scientific were examples that it was free regardless of RH not providing it in that manner.
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https://www.redhat.com/en/store/red-hat-enterprise-linux-server-virtual#?sku=RH00005
The "Self-support" version is still $349. You have to have a subscription to acquire the software. I'm curious what happens if you sign up for an evaluation and let the time lapse, does the OS cease to function?
"Self-support subscription:
Does not include Red Hat customer support. Does not include Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host. Can only be deployed on physical systems. Cannot be stacked with other subscriptions. Is not intended for production environment. -
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
@dashrender said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
But, they cloak that fact behind their support contracts, making the install media challenging to get directly from them.
Making a free product and providing a download service for a free product are totally different things. There is no cloaking or anything of the sort. RHEL is free, always has been. That THEY don't provide you a download link to it is neither here nor there. That THEY don't advertise this and make a big deal of it is neither here nor there. That they only have a marketing and sales team to sell support doesn't constitute a cloak.
Feel free to "fork" this..
If "RHEL is free, always has been"...why not this option instead of CentOSCentOS is RHEL free. The names are essentially just names of when it is free or not free. They aren't two separate products. Technically some logos and markers are different, but the actual OS is literally identical. They are the same product, from the same vendor. There are only two names for historical reasons.
Because RHEL is really a reference to being licensed for support and not to the OS specifically, it creates on odd situation. If you get a free copy of RHEL, we call it CentOS. So is RHEL free? Well, is a $.99 Hamburger free? No, we'd call it a free hamburger. But is RHEL available for free, yes. Because the name refers to it being paid for, it's a linguistic problem.
But bottom line, RHEL is free, period. It's made of components that must be available for free. RH doesn't have an option to keep it from being free. Even before RH made a point of providing it for free, CentOS and Scientific were examples that it was free regardless of RH not providing it in that manner.
Is every single feature available on RHEL also available on CentOS?
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@bnrstnr said in How is RHEL Free?:
https://www.redhat.com/en/store/red-hat-enterprise-linux-server-virtual#?sku=RH00005
The "Self-support" version is still $349. You have to have a subscription to acquire the software. I'm curious what happens if you sign up for an evaluation and let the time lapse, does the OS cease to function?
"Self-support subscription:
Does not include Red Hat customer support. Does not include Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host. Can only be deployed on physical systems. Cannot be stacked with other subscriptions. Is not intended for production environment.Yes, but the FREE version is FREE.
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@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
@dashrender said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
But, they cloak that fact behind their support contracts, making the install media challenging to get directly from them.
Making a free product and providing a download service for a free product are totally different things. There is no cloaking or anything of the sort. RHEL is free, always has been. That THEY don't provide you a download link to it is neither here nor there. That THEY don't advertise this and make a big deal of it is neither here nor there. That they only have a marketing and sales team to sell support doesn't constitute a cloak.
Feel free to "fork" this..
If "RHEL is free, always has been"...why not this option instead of CentOSCentOS is RHEL free. The names are essentially just names of when it is free or not free. They aren't two separate products. Technically some logos and markers are different, but the actual OS is literally identical. They are the same product, from the same vendor. There are only two names for historical reasons.
Because RHEL is really a reference to being licensed for support and not to the OS specifically, it creates on odd situation. If you get a free copy of RHEL, we call it CentOS. So is RHEL free? Well, is a $.99 Hamburger free? No, we'd call it a free hamburger. But is RHEL available for free, yes. Because the name refers to it being paid for, it's a linguistic problem.
But bottom line, RHEL is free, period. It's made of components that must be available for free. RH doesn't have an option to keep it from being free. Even before RH made a point of providing it for free, CentOS and Scientific were examples that it was free regardless of RH not providing it in that manner.
Is every single feature available on RHEL also available on CentOS?
Yes, CentOS IS RHEL. They are the same product.
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@bnrstnr said in How is RHEL Free?:
The "Self-support" version is still $349. You have to have a subscription to acquire the software.
You are on the wrong page. That's to get the RHEL branded version. The free version on RH's site is right here:
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@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
@dashrender said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
But, they cloak that fact behind their support contracts, making the install media challenging to get directly from them.
Making a free product and providing a download service for a free product are totally different things. There is no cloaking or anything of the sort. RHEL is free, always has been. That THEY don't provide you a download link to it is neither here nor there. That THEY don't advertise this and make a big deal of it is neither here nor there. That they only have a marketing and sales team to sell support doesn't constitute a cloak.
Feel free to "fork" this..
If "RHEL is free, always has been"...why not this option instead of CentOSCentOS is RHEL free. The names are essentially just names of when it is free or not free. They aren't two separate products. Technically some logos and markers are different, but the actual OS is literally identical. They are the same product, from the same vendor. There are only two names for historical reasons.
Because RHEL is really a reference to being licensed for support and not to the OS specifically, it creates on odd situation. If you get a free copy of RHEL, we call it CentOS. So is RHEL free? Well, is a $.99 Hamburger free? No, we'd call it a free hamburger. But is RHEL available for free, yes. Because the name refers to it being paid for, it's a linguistic problem.
But bottom line, RHEL is free, period. It's made of components that must be available for free. RH doesn't have an option to keep it from being free. Even before RH made a point of providing it for free, CentOS and Scientific were examples that it was free regardless of RH not providing it in that manner.
Is every single feature available on RHEL also available on CentOS?
Yes, CentOS IS RHEL. They are the same product.
No they are not.
They are different products. They talk to different repos even.
They might be feature compatible. But they are not the same product.
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@bnrstnr red hat release the source code of its distribution. Then they sold their own compiled version. when you buy their version you also buy their support. This is how it works.
Then a number of individuals started recompile redhat from sources keeping the same confing flags - aka making the rebuilt product both API and ABI compatible with red hat (= a clone) they named the product in a number of ways:
cern/fermilab people named it scentific linux - and they modified heavily the standard install and added some stuff for their needs - still keeping 100% compatibility with upstream
other guys tried to keep the UX exactly the same than upstream, they made centos (Community ENTerprise OS)
what you get is RHEL without corporate support. Of course this is not RHEV or other stuff, even if you can come close to RHEV adding some centos repos and keeping up with the pace of the upstream ovirt project.
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@jaredbusch said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
@dashrender said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
But, they cloak that fact behind their support contracts, making the install media challenging to get directly from them.
Making a free product and providing a download service for a free product are totally different things. There is no cloaking or anything of the sort. RHEL is free, always has been. That THEY don't provide you a download link to it is neither here nor there. That THEY don't advertise this and make a big deal of it is neither here nor there. That they only have a marketing and sales team to sell support doesn't constitute a cloak.
Feel free to "fork" this..
If "RHEL is free, always has been"...why not this option instead of CentOSCentOS is RHEL free. The names are essentially just names of when it is free or not free. They aren't two separate products. Technically some logos and markers are different, but the actual OS is literally identical. They are the same product, from the same vendor. There are only two names for historical reasons.
Because RHEL is really a reference to being licensed for support and not to the OS specifically, it creates on odd situation. If you get a free copy of RHEL, we call it CentOS. So is RHEL free? Well, is a $.99 Hamburger free? No, we'd call it a free hamburger. But is RHEL available for free, yes. Because the name refers to it being paid for, it's a linguistic problem.
But bottom line, RHEL is free, period. It's made of components that must be available for free. RH doesn't have an option to keep it from being free. Even before RH made a point of providing it for free, CentOS and Scientific were examples that it was free regardless of RH not providing it in that manner.
Is every single feature available on RHEL also available on CentOS?
Yes, CentOS IS RHEL. They are the same product.
No they are not.
They are different products. They talk to different repos even.
They might be feature compatible. But they are not the same product.
this is correct IMHO: centos release and security fixes always lag a bit because they recompile everything from source and upload to their own repos.
CENTOS is API and API compatible with redhat and tries to keep its own repos aligned with the contents of redhat, but some divergences are in place with redistributed SW. -
@jaredbusch said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
@dashrender said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
But, they cloak that fact behind their support contracts, making the install media challenging to get directly from them.
Making a free product and providing a download service for a free product are totally different things. There is no cloaking or anything of the sort. RHEL is free, always has been. That THEY don't provide you a download link to it is neither here nor there. That THEY don't advertise this and make a big deal of it is neither here nor there. That they only have a marketing and sales team to sell support doesn't constitute a cloak.
Feel free to "fork" this..
If "RHEL is free, always has been"...why not this option instead of CentOSCentOS is RHEL free. The names are essentially just names of when it is free or not free. They aren't two separate products. Technically some logos and markers are different, but the actual OS is literally identical. They are the same product, from the same vendor. There are only two names for historical reasons.
Because RHEL is really a reference to being licensed for support and not to the OS specifically, it creates on odd situation. If you get a free copy of RHEL, we call it CentOS. So is RHEL free? Well, is a $.99 Hamburger free? No, we'd call it a free hamburger. But is RHEL available for free, yes. Because the name refers to it being paid for, it's a linguistic problem.
But bottom line, RHEL is free, period. It's made of components that must be available for free. RH doesn't have an option to keep it from being free. Even before RH made a point of providing it for free, CentOS and Scientific were examples that it was free regardless of RH not providing it in that manner.
Is every single feature available on RHEL also available on CentOS?
Yes, CentOS IS RHEL. They are the same product.
No they are not.
They are different products. They talk to different repos even.
They might be feature compatible. But they are not the same product.
They CAN talk to different repos. But repo access is not the same as being a different product. The repo is not the OS. RHEL can talk to CentOS repos and works fine. To access the RHEL repos you need a license, but that is a license for access to the repo. It doesn't change the OS.
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@matteo-nunziati said in How is RHEL Free?:
@jaredbusch said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
@dashrender said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
But, they cloak that fact behind their support contracts, making the install media challenging to get directly from them.
Making a free product and providing a download service for a free product are totally different things. There is no cloaking or anything of the sort. RHEL is free, always has been. That THEY don't provide you a download link to it is neither here nor there. That THEY don't advertise this and make a big deal of it is neither here nor there. That they only have a marketing and sales team to sell support doesn't constitute a cloak.
Feel free to "fork" this..
If "RHEL is free, always has been"...why not this option instead of CentOSCentOS is RHEL free. The names are essentially just names of when it is free or not free. They aren't two separate products. Technically some logos and markers are different, but the actual OS is literally identical. They are the same product, from the same vendor. There are only two names for historical reasons.
Because RHEL is really a reference to being licensed for support and not to the OS specifically, it creates on odd situation. If you get a free copy of RHEL, we call it CentOS. So is RHEL free? Well, is a $.99 Hamburger free? No, we'd call it a free hamburger. But is RHEL available for free, yes. Because the name refers to it being paid for, it's a linguistic problem.
But bottom line, RHEL is free, period. It's made of components that must be available for free. RH doesn't have an option to keep it from being free. Even before RH made a point of providing it for free, CentOS and Scientific were examples that it was free regardless of RH not providing it in that manner.
Is every single feature available on RHEL also available on CentOS?
Yes, CentOS IS RHEL. They are the same product.
No they are not.
They are different products. They talk to different repos even.
They might be feature compatible. But they are not the same product.
this is correct IMHO: centos release and security fixes always lag a bit because they recompile everything from source and upload to their own repos.
CENTOS is API and API compatible with redhat and tries to keep its own repos aligned with the contents of redhat, but some divergences are in place with redistributed SW.The RELEASE might lag but it's the same product. That the CentOS brand labeling is later doesn't make it different.
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@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@matteo-nunziati said in How is RHEL Free?:
@jaredbusch said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
@dashrender said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
But, they cloak that fact behind their support contracts, making the install media challenging to get directly from them.
Making a free product and providing a download service for a free product are totally different things. There is no cloaking or anything of the sort. RHEL is free, always has been. That THEY don't provide you a download link to it is neither here nor there. That THEY don't advertise this and make a big deal of it is neither here nor there. That they only have a marketing and sales team to sell support doesn't constitute a cloak.
Feel free to "fork" this..
If "RHEL is free, always has been"...why not this option instead of CentOSCentOS is RHEL free. The names are essentially just names of when it is free or not free. They aren't two separate products. Technically some logos and markers are different, but the actual OS is literally identical. They are the same product, from the same vendor. There are only two names for historical reasons.
Because RHEL is really a reference to being licensed for support and not to the OS specifically, it creates on odd situation. If you get a free copy of RHEL, we call it CentOS. So is RHEL free? Well, is a $.99 Hamburger free? No, we'd call it a free hamburger. But is RHEL available for free, yes. Because the name refers to it being paid for, it's a linguistic problem.
But bottom line, RHEL is free, period. It's made of components that must be available for free. RH doesn't have an option to keep it from being free. Even before RH made a point of providing it for free, CentOS and Scientific were examples that it was free regardless of RH not providing it in that manner.
Is every single feature available on RHEL also available on CentOS?
Yes, CentOS IS RHEL. They are the same product.
No they are not.
They are different products. They talk to different repos even.
They might be feature compatible. But they are not the same product.
this is correct IMHO: centos release and security fixes always lag a bit because they recompile everything from source and upload to their own repos.
CENTOS is API and API compatible with redhat and tries to keep its own repos aligned with the contents of redhat, but some divergences are in place with redistributed SW.The RELEASE might lag but it's the same product. That the CentOS brand labeling is later doesn't make it different.
IMHO I think it is a matter of terms: a product is something packaged by someone. Say that they are the same product means that redhat releases the distro even in free-as-in-beer without support and names it centos. This is not correct.
Say that they are 100% compatible IS correct, but it is not the same stuff.
Just think at an hypotetical error in the toolchain of centos: this is not propagated in RH and vice-versa.For daily usage they can provide 100% same experience but it is a third party redistribution. even if RH has hosted centos nowdays.
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@matteo-nunziati said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@matteo-nunziati said in How is RHEL Free?:
@jaredbusch said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
@dashrender said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
But, they cloak that fact behind their support contracts, making the install media challenging to get directly from them.
Making a free product and providing a download service for a free product are totally different things. There is no cloaking or anything of the sort. RHEL is free, always has been. That THEY don't provide you a download link to it is neither here nor there. That THEY don't advertise this and make a big deal of it is neither here nor there. That they only have a marketing and sales team to sell support doesn't constitute a cloak.
Feel free to "fork" this..
If "RHEL is free, always has been"...why not this option instead of CentOSCentOS is RHEL free. The names are essentially just names of when it is free or not free. They aren't two separate products. Technically some logos and markers are different, but the actual OS is literally identical. They are the same product, from the same vendor. There are only two names for historical reasons.
Because RHEL is really a reference to being licensed for support and not to the OS specifically, it creates on odd situation. If you get a free copy of RHEL, we call it CentOS. So is RHEL free? Well, is a $.99 Hamburger free? No, we'd call it a free hamburger. But is RHEL available for free, yes. Because the name refers to it being paid for, it's a linguistic problem.
But bottom line, RHEL is free, period. It's made of components that must be available for free. RH doesn't have an option to keep it from being free. Even before RH made a point of providing it for free, CentOS and Scientific were examples that it was free regardless of RH not providing it in that manner.
Is every single feature available on RHEL also available on CentOS?
Yes, CentOS IS RHEL. They are the same product.
No they are not.
They are different products. They talk to different repos even.
They might be feature compatible. But they are not the same product.
this is correct IMHO: centos release and security fixes always lag a bit because they recompile everything from source and upload to their own repos.
CENTOS is API and API compatible with redhat and tries to keep its own repos aligned with the contents of redhat, but some divergences are in place with redistributed SW.The RELEASE might lag but it's the same product. That the CentOS brand labeling is later doesn't make it different.
IMHO I think it is a matter of terms: a product is something packaged by someone. Say that they are the same product means that redhat releases the distro even in free-as-in-beer without support and names it centos. This is not correct.
Say that they are 100% compatible IS correct, but it is not the same stuff.
Just think at an hypotetical error in the toolchain of centos: this is not propagated in RH and vice-versa.For daily usage they can provide 100% same experience but it is a third party redistribution. even if RH has hosted centos nowdays.
That was kind of my point about the NAME meaning not free, but the THING is free. Can you download RHEL for free? Yes. Can you use it for free? Yes. Can you also get it as CentOS for free, yes.
RHEL IS available for free, CentOS is proof that someone did exactly that. Now CentOS IS from RH, and is free.
We are getting into silly semantics to make RHEL not free. No matter how you word it, there is a way to get RHEL for free.
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@matteo-nunziati said in How is RHEL Free?:
For daily usage they can provide 100% same experience but it is a third party redistribution. even if RH has hosted centos nowdays.
It's not third party, RHEL doesn't host it, they make it.
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@donaldlandru mentioned that the RHEL branded edition can be downloaded now and that support is purchased separately. I've not heard, but would not have looked because CentOS covers that already.
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@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@donaldlandru mentioned that the RHEL branded edition can be downloaded now and that support is purchased separately. I've not heard, but would not have looked because CentOS covers that already.
You can get a developer edition with updates for free, But you need to be part of their dev network which is also free to join. You just can't run it in production.
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@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@matteo-nunziati said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@matteo-nunziati said in How is RHEL Free?:
@jaredbusch said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
@dashrender said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
But, they cloak that fact behind their support contracts, making the install media challenging to get directly from them.
Making a free product and providing a download service for a free product are totally different things. There is no cloaking or anything of the sort. RHEL is free, always has been. That THEY don't provide you a download link to it is neither here nor there. That THEY don't advertise this and make a big deal of it is neither here nor there. That they only have a marketing and sales team to sell support doesn't constitute a cloak.
Feel free to "fork" this..
If "RHEL is free, always has been"...why not this option instead of CentOSCentOS is RHEL free. The names are essentially just names of when it is free or not free. They aren't two separate products. Technically some logos and markers are different, but the actual OS is literally identical. They are the same product, from the same vendor. There are only two names for historical reasons.
Because RHEL is really a reference to being licensed for support and not to the OS specifically, it creates on odd situation. If you get a free copy of RHEL, we call it CentOS. So is RHEL free? Well, is a $.99 Hamburger free? No, we'd call it a free hamburger. But is RHEL available for free, yes. Because the name refers to it being paid for, it's a linguistic problem.
But bottom line, RHEL is free, period. It's made of components that must be available for free. RH doesn't have an option to keep it from being free. Even before RH made a point of providing it for free, CentOS and Scientific were examples that it was free regardless of RH not providing it in that manner.
Is every single feature available on RHEL also available on CentOS?
Yes, CentOS IS RHEL. They are the same product.
No they are not.
They are different products. They talk to different repos even.
They might be feature compatible. But they are not the same product.
this is correct IMHO: centos release and security fixes always lag a bit because they recompile everything from source and upload to their own repos.
CENTOS is API and API compatible with redhat and tries to keep its own repos aligned with the contents of redhat, but some divergences are in place with redistributed SW.The RELEASE might lag but it's the same product. That the CentOS brand labeling is later doesn't make it different.
IMHO I think it is a matter of terms: a product is something packaged by someone. Say that they are the same product means that redhat releases the distro even in free-as-in-beer without support and names it centos. This is not correct.
Say that they are 100% compatible IS correct, but it is not the same stuff.
Just think at an hypotetical error in the toolchain of centos: this is not propagated in RH and vice-versa.For daily usage they can provide 100% same experience but it is a third party redistribution. even if RH has hosted centos nowdays.
That was kind of my point about the NAME meaning not free, but the THING is free. Can you download RHEL for free? Yes. Can you use it for free? Yes. Can you also get it as CentOS for free, yes.
RHEL IS available for free, CentOS is proof that someone did exactly that. Now CentOS IS from RH, and is free.
We are getting into silly semantics to make RHEL not free. No matter how you word it, there is a way to get RHEL for free.
It's not semantics though. You can't download RHEL for free and use it in production. You can get the source code for free but that's not RHEL, because not everything is in that source code. Both have different packages at install. CentOS has packages available that RHEL doesn't and RHEL has packages available that CentOS doesn't.
There also used to be differences with things like cron. I know of one specific example in RHEL/CentOS 5 where each treated certain extensions under /etc/cron.d differently. This kind of thing may be fixed since the merger in 2014 but it's still a separate group compiling with possibly different flags so this can still happen.
You can't say that it's the same because you can install the same packages on either. You can install RPMs on Ubuntu, that doesn't make it the same as RHEL.
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@stacksofplates said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@matteo-nunziati said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@matteo-nunziati said in How is RHEL Free?:
@jaredbusch said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in How is RHEL Free?:
@fateknollogee said in How is RHEL Free?:
@scottalanmiller said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
@dashrender said in Let's Convince Someone to release a FOSS PBX:
But, they cloak that fact behind their support contracts, making the install media challenging to get directly from them.
Making a free product and providing a download service for a free product are totally different things. There is no cloaking or anything of the sort. RHEL is free, always has been. That THEY don't provide you a download link to it is neither here nor there. That THEY don't advertise this and make a big deal of it is neither here nor there. That they only have a marketing and sales team to sell support doesn't constitute a cloak.
Feel free to "fork" this..
If "RHEL is free, always has been"...why not this option instead of CentOSCentOS is RHEL free. The names are essentially just names of when it is free or not free. They aren't two separate products. Technically some logos and markers are different, but the actual OS is literally identical. They are the same product, from the same vendor. There are only two names for historical reasons.
Because RHEL is really a reference to being licensed for support and not to the OS specifically, it creates on odd situation. If you get a free copy of RHEL, we call it CentOS. So is RHEL free? Well, is a $.99 Hamburger free? No, we'd call it a free hamburger. But is RHEL available for free, yes. Because the name refers to it being paid for, it's a linguistic problem.
But bottom line, RHEL is free, period. It's made of components that must be available for free. RH doesn't have an option to keep it from being free. Even before RH made a point of providing it for free, CentOS and Scientific were examples that it was free regardless of RH not providing it in that manner.
Is every single feature available on RHEL also available on CentOS?
Yes, CentOS IS RHEL. They are the same product.
No they are not.
They are different products. They talk to different repos even.
They might be feature compatible. But they are not the same product.
this is correct IMHO: centos release and security fixes always lag a bit because they recompile everything from source and upload to their own repos.
CENTOS is API and API compatible with redhat and tries to keep its own repos aligned with the contents of redhat, but some divergences are in place with redistributed SW.The RELEASE might lag but it's the same product. That the CentOS brand labeling is later doesn't make it different.
IMHO I think it is a matter of terms: a product is something packaged by someone. Say that they are the same product means that redhat releases the distro even in free-as-in-beer without support and names it centos. This is not correct.
Say that they are 100% compatible IS correct, but it is not the same stuff.
Just think at an hypotetical error in the toolchain of centos: this is not propagated in RH and vice-versa.For daily usage they can provide 100% same experience but it is a third party redistribution. even if RH has hosted centos nowdays.
That was kind of my point about the NAME meaning not free, but the THING is free. Can you download RHEL for free? Yes. Can you use it for free? Yes. Can you also get it as CentOS for free, yes.
RHEL IS available for free, CentOS is proof that someone did exactly that. Now CentOS IS from RH, and is free.
We are getting into silly semantics to make RHEL not free. No matter how you word it, there is a way to get RHEL for free.
It's not semantics though. You can't download RHEL for free and use it in production. You can get the source code for free but that's not RHEL, because not everything is in that source code. Both have different packages at install. CentOS has packages available that RHEL doesn't and RHEL has packages available that CentOS doesn't.
There also used to be differences with things like cron. I know of one specific example in RHEL/CentOS 5 where each treated certain extensions under /etc/cron.d differently. This kind of thing may be fixed since the merger in 2014 but it's still a separate group compiling with possibly different flags so this can still happen.
You can't say that it's the same because you can install the same packages on either. You can install RPMs on Ubuntu, that doesn't make it the same as RHEL.
Are you sure you can't use it in production? Why not. And CentOS is RHEL downloaded. You really can download RHEL and use it in production. There is no question there. That there is a chance that you have to download code rather than binary doesn't change that. But that you can get binaries too is an option. RH can't change your use license even as binary.
