Fwd: Cluster Poll Results (tangent into OS choices)

[Glen Otero]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Glen Otero <glen at callident.com>
> Date: Mon Nov 3, 2003  6:42:09  PM US/Pacific
> To: beowulf at beowulf.org, Mike Snitzer <msnitzer at lnxi.com>
> Cc: npaci-rocks-discussion at sdsc.edu
> Subject: Re: Cluster Poll Results (tangent into OS choices)
>
>
> On Monday, November 3, 2003, at 03:51  PM, Mike Snitzer wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Oct 31 2003 at 13:37,
>> Wei Deng <weideng at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 02:44:59PM -0500, Vann H. Walke wrote:
>>>> - OSCAR / Rocks / etc...  - generally installed on top of another
>>>> distribution.  We still have to pick a base distribution.
>>>
>>> From what I heard from Rocks mailing list, they will release 3.1.0 
>>> the
>>> next Month, which will be based on RHEL 3.0, compiled from source 
>>> code
>>> that is publicly available, and free of charge.
>>
>> Rebuilding RHEL3 into a freebie-ripoff version doesn't pass the 
>> smile-test
>> for corporations trying to coexist and actually work with Red Hat.
>
> Really? Is that why Dell, HP, Cray, Promicro, and Intel all work with 
> and/or sell Rocks-based clusters? Because it won't pass the smile test 
> inside a corporation?
>
>> Why
>> not focus that questionable rebuilding effort on a more worthwhile 
>> task?
>> E.g. porting Fedora Core to support amd64, ia64, etc; adding features 
>> to
>> Fedora Core that are relevant to clustering, etc.
>>
>>> Even though Rocks is based on RedHat distribution, it is complete, 
>>> which
>>> means you only need to download Rocks ISOs to accomplish your
>>> installation.
>>
>> All well and good, but basing a "complete" clustering solution on a 
>> reverse
>> engineered RHEL is completely underhanded and wrong (regardless of 
>> whether
>> you feel RH is being greedy or whatever).  Ripping off RHEL is a 
>> pretty
>> cheap contribution to the advancement of free clustering technology.  
>> But
>> maybe this type of thing gets peoples' ROCKS off?
>
> It's hardly reverse engineered, underhanded, or wrong. The Rocks guys 
> have been releasing their software for years based on standard Red Hat 
> releases. In order to make their cluster software freely available on 
> ia64, they built RH AS 2.1 from srpms, which is perfectly legal. They 
> also had planned to base the Rocks software on RH9 in the near future, 
> but RH decided to stop supporting everything but RHEL. So, in order to 
> continue to provide the community with the latest and greatest 
> clustering software with a Red Hat foundation, the Rocks guys are 
> migrating to a RHEL release.  And in order to keep it free of charge, 
> they are building it all from scratch using RHEL srpms. And don't 
> think they are pulling one over on Red Hat or ripping Red Hat off. The 
> Rocks crew communicates frequently with Red Hat regarding these very 
> issues. Red Hat knows exactly what they are doing and supports it.  
> Besides, the technology that makes Rocks what it is is hardly due to 
> anything Red Hat creates. It's all the software that the Rocks crew 
> has written and packaged on top of Red Hat that matters.
>
>> Mike
>>
>> (these views are my own; I just happen to work for a clustering 
>> company ;)
>
> These views are my own. I just happen to own a clustering company.
>
> Glen Otero, Ph.D.
> Linux Prophet
>
>
> Glen Otero, Ph.D.
> Linux Prophet
> 619.917.1772
>
>
Glen Otero, Ph.D.
Linux Prophet
619.917.1772

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