On 7/22/23 02:29, Gordon Messmer wrote:
On 2023-07-21 00:30, Lee Thomas Stephen wrote:
But for my business, I do not want to pay Red Hat, Zimbra, or Google
Workspace.
Why ?
Because the general rule seems to be
Oh! You are an individual, we will offer you affordable/free service
What! You are a business, we will offer you extremely 'unaffordable'
service.
Because being a 'business' by default means you have a 'lot' of money
to waste.
I'm not a Red Hat employee, so I'm not positive how they would respond
to that. But, speaking as a customer who has worked with numerous
enterprise support agreements over several decades, I want to suggest
that the issue isn't that Red Hat assumes that businesses have a lot
of money to spend, it's that they're targeting a set of the market
that you might not be in right now.
From my point of view, Red Hat doesn't really sell software. They give
away software. All of their software is available at no charge,
typically in an unbranded release. What Red Hat sells is support.
Does Red Hat give away software anymore?
I don't mean helpdesk style "support-me-when-something-breaks"
support. Support isn't something that exists only during incidents,
support is a relationship. It's periodic meetings with your account
manager and engineers. It's discussing your roadmap and your pain
points regularly, and getting direction from them. It's the
opportunity to tell Red Hat what your needs and priorities are, and
helping them make decisions about where to allocate their engineers
time to address the real needs of their customers. It's setting the
direction for the company that builds the system that sits underneath
your technical operations. That kind of support is what makes RHEL a
valuable offering.
If you don't need the kind of support that comes with enterprise
offerings, then by all means, use the Free Software that Red Hat
provides to the community.
I am confused. Last month Red Hat announced that the source code would
not be published.
But don't make the mistake of thinking that Red Hat is trying to mlik
businesses simply because they're businesses. Red Hat's offerings are
expensive because they're enterprise-focused support plans.
Businesses can purchase in a tax-advantageous manner that you can not as
an individual. Companies do not pay tax on their expenses.
That might partially explain the higher rates for commercial products
and services.
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I am not an expert network manager. I am a physician that used CentOS 8
on my three practice servers until the big "rug pull." At the time, I
had a choice between switching to the Stream or Oracle Linux 8. I went
with Oracle Linux 8 and had no complaints. Some have suggested that the
evil Oracle will execute the same IBM rug pull. I considered that.
That concern is a non-issue now.
The spirit of GPL was meant to force sharing and prevent the
commercialization of the volunteer work of many. At the time, I was
confused about why IBM purchased Red Hat for an astronomical amount.
Well, it is clear now. As the readers know, there is a significant
defect in the GPL: A Comprehensive Analysis of the GPL Issues With the
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Business Model
<https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/> The
terms of the license are enforceable, not the spirit
I think the Rocky Linux workaround will eventually fail. I expect IBM
already has a plan for all contingencies.
There is reason for anger. Is there a reason for hope?
frank saporito md
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