CentOS - Jun 2013 - RHEL clone distributions being marginalized?

It appears that Redhat is starting to offer newer packages as an add on license
to their distribution. In the past I believe they only offered add on license
packages beyond what did not come with the base distribution like GFS or the HA
packages. Of course this has also changed over time. The latest beta release of
software collections and the developer suite shows that they are providing
software channels that install newer versions of GCC(4.8), Python(2.7, 3.3),
PHP, perl, mariadb, etc. I'm wondering if at some point Redhat is going to
remove these packages from the base distribution and only have them as add on
licensed channels. I guess they still need a baseline version that will stay the
same for the customers who refuse to update for compatibility reasons. At this
point the developer suite is a pretty good deal because you get RHEL server with
most of the licensed add on channels for only $99 a year. However, you're
not suppose to use it for production.. Is there a plan for the CentOS group to
release these newer packages too? If these packages start being used by
developers and required to run their programs/web apps I think it could
marginalize RHEL clone distributions like CentOS.

David.

On 06/07/2013 05:46 PM, David C. Miller wrote:
> It appears that Redhat is starting to offer newer packages as an add on
license to their distribution. In the past I believe they only offered add on
license packages beyond what did not come with the base distribution like GFS or
the HA packages. Of course this has also changed over time. The latest beta
release of software collections and the developer suite shows that they are
providing software channels that install newer versions of GCC(4.8), Python(2.7,
3.3), PHP, perl, mariadb, etc. I'm wondering if at some point Redhat is
going to remove these packages from the base distribution and only have them as
add on licensed channels. I guess they still need a baseline version that will
stay the same for the customers who refuse to update for compatibility reasons.
At this point the developer suite is a pretty good deal because you get RHEL
server with most of the licensed add on channels for only $99 a year. However,
you're not suppose to use it for production.. Is there a
 pl
>   an for the CentOS group to release these newer packages too? If these
packages start being used by developers and required to run their programs/web
apps I think it could marginalize RHEL clone distributions like CentOS.
>
> David.
Red Hat has a long history of commitment to open source. I have seen 
nothing to indicate that this is changing.

They have their "base" OS and then they have a bunch of optional 
add-ons, like their Resilient Storage (gfs2) and High-Availability (HA 
cluster stack) AddOns, as you mentioned. As you can see, there packages 
are available from CentOS because Red Hat releases them under the GPL.

Whether CentOS decides to offer a repo with the newer versions of 
software or not is a separate question that I will skip here. The core 
question, "are RHEL clones being marginalized", I would say
"No". I've
certainly not seen anything to that effect in either their behaviour or 
their policies.

-- 
Digimer
Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/
What if the cure for cancer is trapped in the mind of a person without 
access to education?

On 07.06.2013 23:46, David C. Miller wrote:
> It appears that Redhat is starting to offer newer packages as an add on
license to their distribution. In the past I believe they only offered add on
license packages beyond what did not come with the base distribution like GFS or
the HA packages. Of course this has also changed over time. The latest beta
release of software collections and the developer suite shows that they are
providing software channels that install newer versions of GCC(4.8), Python(2.7,
3.3), PHP, perl, mariadb, etc. I'm wondering if at some point Redhat is
going to remove these packages from the base distribution and only have them as
add on licensed channels. I guess they still need a baseline version that will
stay the same for the customers who refuse to update for compatibility reasons.
At this point the developer suite is a pretty good deal because you get RHEL
server with most of the licensed add on channels for only $99 a year. However,
you're not suppose to use it for production.. Is there a
 pl
>   an for the CentOS group to release these newer packages too? If these
packages start being used by developers and required to run their programs/web
apps I think it could marginalize RHEL clone distributions like CentOS.
All of this really just describes that Red Hat has added the ability to 
create alternative Packages that can be installed next to each other 
using Software Collections.

You can build your own using the Fedora documentation:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora_Contributor_Documentation/1/html/Software_Collections_Guide/index.html

And you can get the ones you mentioned here:
https://fedorahosted.org/SoftwareCollections/

You forgot to explain how all of this marginalizes cloned distros though.

Regads,
   Dennis