[CentOS] link to "commercial support" page isn't really helpful

Robert Heller heller at deepsoft.com
Mon Jun 22 20:32:40 UTC 2009


At Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:14:20 -0400 (EDT) CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> On Mon, 22 Jun 2009, Scott Silva wrote:
> 
> > If they want commercial support, what is wrong with RedHat? That is
> > what they do. CentOS is a "community supported" enterprise distro.
> > Most organizations that want support usually look for an established
> > business entity.
> >
> >  Besides, paid contracts at the top of the food chain keeps the
> > scraps floating down to the rest of us. If RedHat ever sees CentOS
> > as a competition, they will surely do something to make it more
> > difficult.
> 
>   you're right, and i'm starting to appreciate the distinction people
> have been pointing out to me.  that still means the "commercial
> support" page should be clarified to make that obvious in some way.

And there are different levels of 'commercial support'.  One option is
indeed RedHat itself.  For some companies / organizations RedHat's level
of support is too costly (for some definitions of 'cost' -- not always
a pure monetary issue in some cases).  Many 'mid sized' companies /
organizations have an in-house IT staff, who are capable of dealing with
day-to-day management and are also capable of getting outside support
via newsgroups, E-Mail lists, and Wikis.  *Some* smaller companies /
organizations might prefer a 'local' personal support structure, rather
than support from an office in NC or some equally distant location. *I*
suspect that many of these smaller companies / organizations might
prefer to go with CentOS if they knew there was a local support person
that they could put on a retainer contract.  Yes, this probably does
mean taking some business away from RedHat, but it is probably business
RedHat might prefer to farm out anyway, since getting daily calls from
Middle Of Nowhereville about 'trivial' issues probably costs RedHat more
than they make on the lowest level of support.

> 
> rday
> --
> 
> ========================================================================
> Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
> 
>         Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry.
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