On Monday 24 January 2005 20:49, Dag Wieers wrote:
On Mon, 24 Jan 2005, Matt Shields wrote:
Going along that lines, the idea of paying RedHat for RHEL is for companies that want that warm fuzzy feeling they get with having the ability to open a support ticket with a company.
The company I work for has service contracts with RedHat and Microsoft, yet, in the 7 years they've been in business they have never once opened a ticket with either company. I've tried convincing them to switch all the RHEL servers to CentOS, but they say paying RH & MS is like paying for insurance.
Not only that, you're supporting future development of a piece of software (or rather a compilation of software pieces) that may be critical for your business.
Even when you're considering to use CentOS, keep in mind that CentOS is a recompilation of a product. Without the existence of that product, CentOS would not exist (or at least not in its current form).
I was just in the middle of writing almost the same - so I got only 1 thing to add. Corporations usually don't only consider the immediate costs. The first time you work on a system where an hour downtime costs a million dollar you'll change your attitude. You will realize that there is more to cost than the amount you pay for licenses. Plus license costs can be predicted - outage costs can't. So while you can usually get away paying a million dollar a year in license fees, the first time you have $5 mill in outage costs, you'll be in trouble.
Of course this mindset does not always apply but the more often this happens to you, the more conservative you get and the more you are willing to overpay rather than take a risk.
Peter.