On Sun, 2005-04-03 at 11:39 -0600, Collins Richey wrote:
> I'm a home user of CentOS (a desktop and a laptop) because I like the
> quality of the product and I love the cost. I'm a great believer in
> FOSS.
>
> That being said, I know that some of you use CentOS for production
> servers and (perhaps?) desktops as well. I've read at leat one comment
> like "I have 20 CentOS servers."
>
> My employer is a firm believer in RHEL - license costs are just a
> business decision.
>
> 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.
>
> What do you think?
----
I think asking this means that you have a lot to learn about GPL and
various other F/OSS licenses and what distributions are.
Red Hat contributes much to open source development but they have also
come to being and fruition by their own exploitation (not meaning in a
derogative way) of the open source software.
Because it is open source, they are merely packaging that which is
already available to them free of charge - restricted by the licenses of
the software that they package.
They are required to make the source code for their RHEL packages
available in a manner that is prescribed by the various licensing
restrictions of these packages and ultimately, they aren't really
selling the software itself, but rather the support, maintenance,
certification etc. for the software.
Thus if you wish to accept characterizations of others regarding the
usage of RHEL packaging that is your choice but it would seem that you
are getting what you paid for with something like CentOS - you don't get
support or certification...only the open source software which is
available for free in so many other packaged distributions.
Just what 'major work' is it that Red Hat actually does?
Craig
