+1 Frank
Personally I am moving all my workloads to anything but. It's clear the direction that Red hat is taking and so be it. I've seen it multiple times with open source projects that just seems like greed kicks in and it's all about making the most $$ that they can. Oh and let's be clear, for anyone saying that Red hat wasn't making money is crazy talk, they have always made enough and that was clear when IBM bought them for 34B. Really for the most part they have become another Oracle.
The main advantage for me with RHEL was the long support cycle, plenty of distros do 5 year but the 10year helped for a lot of things maybe someone will come along and do just that.
On Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:55 AM frank saporito frank.saporito.md@gmail.com wrote:
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 _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos