Free vs. pay versions (Re: Oracle Sues Google Over Android)

[jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org (Jarod Wilson)]

On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Edward Ned Harvey <blu-Z8efaSeK1ezqlBn2x/YWAg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> From: discuss-bounces-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org [mailto:discuss-bounces-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org] On
>> Behalf Of Jarod Wilson
>>
>> >
>> > For *hardware* it does not work well. ?They require RHEL because they
>> paid
>> > RedHat to develop something proprietary
>>
>> Huh? Says who? News to me. And I work here. Pretty sure you're
>> incorrect there. Red Hat doesn't do proprietary software development
>> for *anyone*. The software in question is more likely written by Dell
>> themselves. No clue how they're enforcing use only with RHEL though.
>
> I went down this road before, extensively, and 100% certain. ?I had centos
> installed on a dell server with perc controller. ?I copied the
> redhat-release file from a legitimate and supposedly equivalent rhel
> installation. ?I tried to install OMSA. ?It wasn't working - kept choking
> with some sort of library improperly linked or something like that ... ?I
> called Dell support, and we worked on it together for some hours.
>
> The conclusion was, some package (I forget the name now, it's been a few
> years) in centos is the "free alternative" to something that's included in
> RHEL. ?It's not the same, and it doesn't work.

I'm sorry, but I still don't buy that it was Red Hat shipping
something CentOS can't. Its entirely possible CentOS built some
library *incorrectly*, but everything shipped in RHEL on the
distribution discs is 100% open-source, modulo binary firmware. The
*only* thing CentOS is required to change are the trademarked Red Hat
bits, like artwork, name, etc. I guess its possible something was
buggered a few years back too, but I'm just as 100% certain that the
RHEL distribution discs contain 100% open-source software (less the
binary firmware exception), and we ship SRPMS for *every* package on
the distribution discs (including the firmware ones).


-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org