[greendave]

> Red Hat pulls together hundreds or thousands of upstreams to create RHEL, participates in many of them, tests all that together, helps partners certify software against it, etc. etc. etc. > It's true, Red Hat doesn't "own" the Linux kernel, but it's done a ton to help develop it over the years. But RHEL is not merely the kernel nor any single upstream. RHEL is a product that comprises thousands of packages all tested together and then released as a supported product. > What Red Hat is trying to guard is not the source code to any single or even groups of projects. It's trying to preserve and capture the value it created from all those parts. Coincidentally, that value is what businesses, competitors, and the community are clamoring for and not the source code alone.

That's a point that (unfortunately) seems to have been lost along the way. A big part of the reason why people use(d) CentOS was because of the confidence they had that it'd be stable, functional, receive timely security updates, etc. And the main reason that was true is the work RedHat put into RHEL.

That said, it's not entirely a one-way street. The widespread use of CentOS meant much wider support for RHEL by open-source packages (and some closed source ones) than a locked down, limited availability RHEL would have had. I know of places that use RHEL because CentOS is widely available, and of places that would never bother to support RHEL if it weren't for the availability and (near) ubiquity of CentOS.