Ubuntu founder doesn't "get" enterprise Linux

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, Martin Marques wrote:

> Ric Moore escribió:
>> On Wed, 2007-01-24 at 09:53 -0500, taharka wrote:
>>> OK, that's not really true. Mark is a sharp guy, and gets open source as
>>> well, indeed, better, than most. But he's completely wrong on his
>>> criticism of Red Hat (which Greg of the Fedora Project shoots down). His
>>> basic point? Because RHEL is a closed binary, it's proprietary.
>>> 
>>> Full article at,
>>> http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2007/01/ubuntu_founder.html
>>> 
>>> taharka
>> Going through my Fedora folder, I came back across this one. I have
>> never understood the comment. How is RHEL a "closed binary"? I'm having
>> a time making sense of that statement. No biggie, just curious as heck.
>
> If RHEL was closed, CentOS wouldn't exist. :-D
>
> So I would say that Mark really doesn't know what he's talking about.

The SRPMS for RHEL are freely available, but the binary RPMs, ISOs, and 
binary update RPMs are available from RH only by subscription.  Red Hat 
branding (graphics, etc.) cannot be used except in conjunction with 
official RH products.  In this sense, RHEL is a "closed binary".

CentOS uses the RHEL SRPMs, but builds its own binary RPMs, ISOs, and 
binary update RPMs (without RH branding).  Of course, RH does not support 
CentOS installations except insofar as updates they release for RHEL are 
available (as source) for CentOS to use.

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs