This week Google acquired OS provider Neverware, maker CloudReady for ChromiumOS. ChromiumOS is a completely open source version of ChromeOS - a sharply limited cloud operating system that runs Chromebooks and Chromeboxes.
On paper, this acquisition sounds great - Google definitely has more resources than Neverware, including, but not limited to, the developer base of ChromeOS itself. According to Neverware's migration FAQ, big G will abide by all existing licensing agreements and currently has no plans to limit the availability of CloudReady's free home edition.
Unfortunately, all of this good news comes with “currently” caveats on every point, which is a little scary as it comes right after Red Hat announced it was killing CentOS Linux and replacing it with CentOS Stream.
While there is no actual relationship between Google and Red Hat, the relationship between CloudReady and Google's own ChromeOS was more or less an exact replica of the relationship between RHEL and CentOS. The flagship distribution is open source in both cases and the source code is available, but compiling it into a working product is a major undertaking and this final working product is not available free of charge from the vendor.
CloudReady, like CentOS before it, takes the freely available source of its parent distribution and turns it into a freely available and immediately working clone.
Chromebook under a different name
The analogy between CentOS and CloudReady breaks down a bit when the question of hardware comes up. Both RHEL and CentOS are installed on the same x86 standard hardware, but Google ChromeOS only applies to certified Google Chromebooks and Chromeboxes, with sharply limited lifecycles and support windows.
CloudReady is designed to extend the capabilities of ChromeOS beyond hardware capabilities and short lifecycles — it can be installed on any arbitrary PC hardware and does not automatically “expire” when that hardware reaches a certain age. For schools with an aging fleet of Windows 7 computers that Windows 10 doesn't fit, CloudReady offers a way to upgrade the operating system without upgrading the hardware itself.
While Neverware's main source of income comes from educational and corporate customers who pay license fees for the device, the company also offers a free home version. The home version of CloudReady allows anyone to turn an old PC (or a new, very cheap PC) into a Chromebook-like system.
The free home edition cannot be controlled through the Google Admin console like a Chromebook in an educational or corporate environment, but is otherwise a functional replacement for ChromeOS, including regular automatic security updates. CloudReady's Education and Enterprise options take it one step further, fully managed through Chrome Management and the Google Admin Console.
Source: arstechnica.com