Collins Richey wrote:
> My employer is a firm believer in RHEL - license costs are just a
> business decision.
As am I. Usually license costs are a business decision - in this case
we have a perfectly legal and free alternative. Some people probably
wouldn't be paying Red Hat even if CentOS didn't exist - they can choose
other free Linux distributions.
With that being said, some of my clients need Oracle and Novell software
that requires them to use RHEL or SLES so it makes sense for them to
purchase licenses and not go with CentOS. I don't think I'm off here by
saying that if Red Hat decided they didn't want projects like CentOS to
exist then that wouldn't imply an automatic, *drastic* increase in new
RHEL subscriptions.
> I would like to know how those of you who use CentOS in commercial
> endeavors justify the decsion - ethics, community vs. vendor support,
> etc., etc. I've heard many comments to the effect that we CentOS users
> are just leaches, since RedHat does the major work.
Red Hat believes in the open source philosophy and thus offer their RHEL
SRPMs to everyone - it's GPL software for the most part anyway. They
would rather sell their support services. People who use CentOS want a
free, open source operating system and our willing to support themselves
rather than rely on commercial support. We help Red Hat isolate and fix
bugs in their commercial offerings. I don't think either party is being
selfish with this kind of symbiotic relationship in place.
