ok, given the flurry of responses to my original post, let me see if i have a handle on this as i think i've finally figured it out and, yes, it does make sense.
the scenario is that there is a very large software company in the area whose only officially supported linux platform is currently suse. however, they are getting increasing call to have their product run on red hat.
for most of their clients (who are fairly sizable) who will want official support, RHEL will be the obvious choice and the software company will advertise that RHEL is what they support. the SW company will be happy, the clients will be happy, and red hat will be happy.
on the other hand, if there is the occasional client who is perhaps not as large, or doesn't have a budget for RHEL, centos will be the obvious option if they're prepared to do their own support. that scenario will, i'm guessing, not be that common so red hat has nothing to worry about it in terms of cutting into their revenue stream in any significant way.
and, finally, for any client that chooses centos, that will represent a possible support contract for independent linux consultants.
sound about right?
rday --
======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry.
Web page: http://crashcourse.ca Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rpjday Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday ========================================================================
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On
Behalf
Of Robert P. J. Day Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 11:57 AM To: CentOS discussion list Subject: [CentOS] RHEL, centos and seeing if i now understand this
ok, given the flurry of responses to my original post, let me see if i have a handle on this as i think i've finally figured it out and, yes, it does make sense.
the scenario is that there is a very large software company in the area whose only officially supported linux platform is currently suse. however, they are getting increasing call to have their product run on red hat.
for most of their clients (who are fairly sizable) who will want official support, RHEL will be the obvious choice and the software company will advertise that RHEL is what they support. the SW company will be happy, the clients will be happy, and red hat will be happy.
on the other hand, if there is the occasional client who is perhaps not as large, or doesn't have a budget for RHEL, centos will be the obvious option if they're prepared to do their own support. that scenario will, i'm guessing, not be that common so red hat has nothing to worry about it in terms of cutting into their revenue stream in any significant way.
and, finally, for any client that chooses centos, that will represent a possible support contract for independent linux consultants.
sound about right?
Yes, to me it does.
FWIW, we've gone the same way. Us being a "not as large" client. 8-) We've basically been a RHEL-shop mostly until I took over the linux-adminning and had to ask for money to renew the RHEL entitlements. The support that is included there I've used once, and ever since resorted to general web searches, forums and mailing lists like this one and to finally settled for CentOS, except for a handful of RHEL machines we still keep because of software legacy. We're a university department with two sub-departments that I admin. I'm also the entire IT-department(...)=meaning doing our own support.
As support goes, I've yet to call RHEL for support again. I'm happy to say that the help and hints I've gotten from members on this list alone is worth a helluva' lot than a cursory look would tell. Very high signal-to-noise ratio that is.
At Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:57:19 -0400 (EDT) CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org wrote:
ok, given the flurry of responses to my original post, let me see if i have a handle on this as i think i've finally figured it out and, yes, it does make sense.
the scenario is that there is a very large software company in the area whose only officially supported linux platform is currently suse. however, they are getting increasing call to have their product run on red hat.
Just about any product that will run under RHEL will also run under CentOS.
for most of their clients (who are fairly sizable) who will want official support, RHEL will be the obvious choice and the software company will advertise that RHEL is what they support. the SW company will be happy, the clients will be happy, and red hat will be happy.
on the other hand, if there is the occasional client who is perhaps not as large, or doesn't have a budget for RHEL, centos will be the obvious option if they're prepared to do their own support. that scenario will, i'm guessing, not be that common so red hat has nothing to worry about it in terms of cutting into their revenue stream in any significant way.
Right. It is not a matter on 'commonness' either. The big companies will likely opt for official RHEL and be paying RedHat the premium support contract. The smaller companies will be using CentOS.
and, finally, for any client that chooses centos, that will represent a possible support contract for independent linux consultants.
Yep.
sound about right?
rday
======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry.Web page: http://crashcourse.ca Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rpjday Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday ======================================================================== _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
on 6-23-2009 5:16 AM Robert Heller spake the following: <snip>
Right. It is not a matter on 'commonness' either. The big companies will likely opt for official RHEL and be paying RedHat the premium support contract. The smaller companies will be using CentOS.
I'm sure if RedHat really wanted to capture this smaller market, they would have a cheaper subscription model that gave updates only and no phone support, maybe at >$100 per server/year. More companies might be able to manage this smaller amount, especially if they wanted somewhat faster updates, as RedHat has to release them first before CentOS can start their release cycle.
"Robert P. J. Day" rpjday@crashcourse.ca wrote:
ok, given the flurry of responses to my original post, let me see if i have a handle on this as i think i've finally figured it out and, yes, it does make sense.
This also would have been clear had you done some research in advance of your postings here -- not very thorough for someone who appears to have to support himself (and possibly his family) via consultancy work.
Ask yourself: What does paying money to Redhat get me? And then go read up on their website.
I can save you some of the trouble; in addition to a shiny box with pressed CDs, and phone number to call, a subscription to Redhat support also gets you the Redhat Network (RHN) which is worth the money in itself. In fact, when I last looked at it a couple of years ago, it was superior to Sun's equivalent.
FWIW, you may have received a warmer response initially had you come to us with problems, not solutions to perceived problems. It's not that we don't appreciate your position, it's just that your approach was wrong. A bit of research helps you and it saves us rehashing stuff that has been covered before, or obvious to those in the community.
On Wed, 24 Jun 2009, Spiro Harvey wrote:
"Robert P. J. Day" rpjday@crashcourse.ca wrote:
ok, given the flurry of responses to my original post, let me see if i have a handle on this as i think i've finally figured it out and, yes, it does make sense.
This also would have been clear had you done some research in advance of your postings here -- not very thorough for someone who appears to have to support himself (and possibly his family) via consultancy work.
Ask yourself: What does paying money to Redhat get me? And then go read up on their website.
the issue was not what support was available from *redhat*, it was trying to clarify what was available from the *centos* community. but thanks for playing.
rday --
======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry.
Web page: http://crashcourse.ca Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rpjday Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday ========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day wrote:
the issue was not what support was available from *redhat*, it was trying to clarify what was available from the *centos* community. but thanks for playing.
It simple really, you want guaranteed support that gets your problems solved you pay for RHEL. If you want to do it on the cheap then you run CentOS and get support from a random bunch of people on a maillist where half of the participants haven't got a clue and hope to not piss of the people who do. I'll give you a hint though, "consultants" selling CentOS solutions and expecting the list to provide commercial grade support for them will tend to piss people off.
-tgc
Subject: Re: [CentOS] RHEL, centos and seeing if i now understand this
On Wed, 24 Jun 2009, Spiro Harvey wrote:
"Robert P. J. Day" rpjday@crashcourse.ca wrote:
ok, given the flurry of responses to my original post,
let me see
if i have a handle on this as i think i've finally figured it out and, yes, it does make sense.
This also would have been clear had you done some research
in advance
of your postings here -- not very thorough for someone who
appears to
have to support himself (and possibly his family) via consultancy work.
Ask yourself: What does paying money to Redhat get me? And then go read up on their website.
the issue was not what support was available from *redhat*, it was trying to clarify what was available from the *centos* community. but thanks for playing.
rday
==============================================================
Robert P. J. Day Waterloo,
Mr Day
so, you started a 2nd thread on basically the same thing because the "link to "commercial support" page isn't really helpful" thread you started wasnt helping anymore?
so, do you really understand now, or will you be starting another thread to see if you understand the second thread about understanding the first thread??
- rh
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Robert Heller -
Robert P. J. Day -
RobertH -
Scott Silva -
Sorin Srbu -
Spiro Harvey -
Tom G. Christensen