[cnet] Caught between a Red Hat and a CentOS - Overclock.net

dharmaBum · 10-16-09

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Novell has been positioning itself as the Avis of Linux, a distant but gaining Red Hat competitor that "tries harder." Like Oracle, Novell argues that it can give customers Red Hat value at a lower price.

There's just one problem with this marketing spin: the "low-cost alternative" to Red Hat isn't Novell. It's CentOS. And CentOS is free as in $0.00.

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It's true that adoption of unpaid Linux like CentOS is booming, and that this no-cost alternative to more expensive solutions like Red Hat is a real threat to Red Hat. This is no doubt why Red Hat has made "free-to-paid" a core element of its ongoing strategy, as related in its recent earnings call.

But it's a much bigger threat to Novell and Oracle, both of whom are trying to position themselves as cheaper alternatives to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

If a customer really wants Red Hat at a lower price, they're not going to move to an incompatible distribution that may or may not run their applications properly. They're going to jump to CentOS, which is basically a carbon copy of RHEL, minus the trademarks (and price tag).

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CentOS: Red Hat's biggest annoyance and greatest friend?

It's not dissimilar to the role that piracy plays for protecting Microsoft's Windows dominance against Linux, especially in emerging markets. Quite possibly the worst thing that Microsoft could do, as IDC has also suggested, is to succeed in its anti-piracy efforts.

Were Microsoft to raise its pricing above $0.00 in such markets, suddenly Linux would look like a much better alternative.

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[cnet] Caught between a Red Hat and a CentOS

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