Collins Richey wrote:
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.
The major work is done mostly by community. Red Hat, or any other distribution, is built from free software that is developed and maintainted by many volunteers who are not affiliated (or paid by) Red Hat in any way. Yes, there are people paid by Red Hat who also contribute, but still, vast majority of work is done by community.
What Red Hat sells is support. And really, there is nothing else they can sell you. So, I don't consider people using RHEL clones to be leaches. They are simply not buying part of the system that they don't need. Even with commercial software (Windoze, Oracle, etc), support is something you pay extra annually on top of what you pay for the software itself. If you want it, you pay for it. If you don't want it, you don't pay for it.
And you know, consulting, support, training, and certifications is a big and profitable business on its own. Even Microsoft is probably making way more money on it, than on selling Windblows OS. You can make a very good money out of it, and if Red Hat as company is managed as it should be, than Red Hat doesn't need to worry about its financial future. Frankly, I don't really understand their business decision not to release RHEL distribution for free. Those who need support would buy support anyhow. Those who don't need support can choose some other just as good distribution anyhow. Somebody who started using some other distribution isn't going to buy support from Red Hat. Somebody who uses RHEL (clone), might decide to spend some extra $$$ for support/training/whatever.
I don't consider Red Hat's bugzilla system to be part of "paid support". If I find a bug when using CentOS, that the bug exists in RHEL, and if I report it, fixing it will lead to better product for Red Hat's paying customers too. Happy customers = more referrals = more profit. Each time I stumble on non-trivial security related or data corruption bugs (as the bug in NFS system I recently reported) when using CentOS, I report it to Red Hat. Usually I'll mention in bug report that I stumbled on it when using CentOS (if I don't forget, happens sometimes). It is than on the Red Hat to decide if they are going to do something about it, or wait till one of paying customers is bitten by it.
I haven't heard anybody being called a leach for downloading and installing Solaris 10 (which is free for commercial use too, for those of you who don't know it, and it is planned to go open source sometime this year) on his/hers Intel box, and not paying for Sun support (or buying Sun hardware). If Sun who actually did all development work themselves (and put way more money into making it) is not calling people "leaches", I would be very dissapointed to hear it from Red Hat who "only" (OK, it isn't as simple as "only", making a distribution is a big job on its own, but you get the point) packaged something that other people spent countless man-hours to make.