[Centos] Centos in the news

[heinlein at madboa.com (Paul Heinlein)]

On Sun, 27 Mar 2005, Collins Richey wrote:

> More fuel for the community support model, as opposed to the 
> official (paid) support channels.

There are (at least) three different kinds of support involved:

1. troubleshooting after installation,

2. packaging and patching,

3. architecture building.

User lists are great at the first kind. It's unlikely that a 
corporate support team, no matter how good it is, can match the 
collective wisdom of its user base when it comes to real-world 
troubleshooting.

By using CentOS we are largely relying on Red Hat's professionals for 
the bulk of the latter two support items. Keeping up with the myriad 
security and bug fixes available for the software in even a minimal 
Linux installation is a large and painstaking job. Likewise, 
maintaining the installer, system-configuration tools, and overall 
package-layout scheme requires a large, concerted effort.

So it's worth saying that Red Hat's customers are underwriting a 
considerable amount of the (necessary and well done) support we 
receive. Those .src.rpm packages we rebuild aren't for the most part 
constructed on volunteer time. :-)

-- Paul Heinlein <heinlein@xxxxxxxxxx>