CentOS has earned no small amount of interest thanks to its pedigree -- it's based on the source code powering the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) offering. Until now, CentOS has lacked the kind of commercial support that helped make RHEL popular among businesses, and hasn't really been viewed as much of a rival. That may be changing, however. Datamation looks at the implications for Linux users and for Red Hat.

Free, community-driven versions of Linux don't often benefit from commercial enterprise support efforts.

For CentOS, that's now about to change. The clone of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) Enterprise Linux is now being commercially supported by services vendor OpenLogic.

OpenLogic's aim is to fill a need for Linux users. Despite being built on RHEL's publicly available source code, CentOS is free and does "not include Red Hat support or Red Hat Network or other offerings that are included with RHEL subscriptions from Red Hat," Kim Weins, senior vice president of products and marketing at OpenLogic, told InternetNews.com.

It's unclear how Red Hat will respond to the new offering. The company told InternetNews.com earlier that it viewed CentOS positively for encouraging participation in Red Hat Enterprise Linux's development community and for broadening the distro's user base.

But now, OpenLogic admits that its addition of commercial support is likely to have some negative impact for Red Hat.

Read the full story at Datamation