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 Last month Red Hat announced that the source code would not be published.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. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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