Reading Into the Red Hat CentOS Deal

There was a somewhat quiet, cost-free acquisition of sorts in the Linux world earlier this year when Red Hat announced it was joining forces with Red Hat Enterprise Linux community clone CentOS. The move, which effectively brings organization, governance, backing and technology of CentOS under Red Hat's brim, is interesting for a few reasons. First, it illustrates the continued presence and power of unpaid community Linux distributions like CentOS. Second, it's part of the changing Linux market, which is being driven by cloud computing and new types of uses on the rise.