I can't speak for everyone, but I can describe my own circumstances: we
run 3rd party, closed source chip design software on RH7.3 because it
doesn't work on RH8.0 or later. For us, the only difference between a
server and workstation is whether the X server is running. The Progeny
service is a perfect fit for us: affordable and convenient. We've never
before had to pay for Red Hat services. We want the security updates,
and we were seriously contemplating compiling them ourselves, after
testing the 3rd party software under ES2.1. Where that 3rd party
software runs completely determines what distribution we run.
We stay legal. Because we don't violate licenses or contracts,
subscribing one of our boxes at $349 for ES2.1 and distributing to the
remainder isn't an option. When you multiply that $349 by (60 today,
who knows next week?), we could cover the salary of a parttime sysadmin
to download the SRPMs and compile them. At $60 a year from Progeny, we
can find something else for that sysadmin to do - and we can skip
testing the 3rd party software on ES2.1.
