There be dragons here - [10:07 AM]

InteropNews: "Why does Red Hat tolerate CentOS? The Community ENTerprise Operating System is an identical binary clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (minus the trademarks), compiled from the source code RPMs that Red Hat conveniently provides on its FTP site. It is also completely free, as in beer" - Tolerate? They have to tolerate the CentOS folks because they decided to create a business on an open source operating system. Thus, they have to release their version of the source code to the community. Right?

Now, if you're a Google and everything you use is on the inside you can keep it close to your chest and not release changes back to the community. You get a competitive advantage. Open Source is nice in that way, but to build an entire business model around selling code and services people can get for free is a tough sell.

Labels: Linux, Open Source