"Did everybody forget Bill Gates' 'If they are gonna pirate, I want them to pirate from us' bit?" Slashdot blogger hairyfeet warned. "Every one using Cent is NOT using Ubuntu; more importantly, they are learning the RH way of doing things. I have no doubt Red Hat will begin offering support contracts for CentOS, as well as an upgrade option. Better they learn RH than learn Debian."

There's no doubt privacy is a highly pertinent goal for 2014, but partnership and collaboration are nothing to sneeze at, either.

That's why the news out of North Carolina last week was so exciting.

"Red Hat and the CentOS Project today announced they are joining forces to build a new CentOS," the press release began, "capable of driving forward development and adoption of next-generation open source technologies."

Yes, that's right -- Linux heavyweight Red Hat and RHEL-based community distro CentOS are teaming up, leaving more than a few heads spinning -- on Slashdot and down at the Linux blogosphere's Broken Windows Lounge.

'Godspeed the New Meta-Distro'

"I think it's a fantastic idea," consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack told Linux Girl. "Not everyone wants the full service package of RHEL, but they definitely need security updates."

Indeed, "this kind of forces-joining is what I have dreamed for every GNU/Linux distro family, as opposed to the 'I fork it because I can' policy," enthused Google+ blogger Gonzalo Velasco C.

"CentOS is a successful communitarian GNU/Linux distribution, and everyone knows how much success Red Hat has as an enterprise, even though they have the well-developed community branch Fedora," Gonzalo Velasco C. pointed out.

More here:

Red Hat and CentOS: A Great Thing or a Gates Thing?