Collins Richey wrote: > My employer is a firm believer in RHEL - license costs are just a > business decision. As am I. Usually license costs are a business decision - in this case we have a perfectly legal and free alternative. Some people probably wouldn't be paying Red Hat even if CentOS didn't exist - they can choose other free Linux distributions. With that being said, some of my clients need Oracle and Novell software that requires them to use RHEL or SLES so it makes sense for them to purchase licenses and not go with CentOS. I don't think I'm off here by saying that if Red Hat decided they didn't want projects like CentOS to exist then that wouldn't imply an automatic, *drastic* increase in new RHEL subscriptions. > 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. Red Hat believes in the open source philosophy and thus offer their RHEL SRPMs to everyone - it's GPL software for the most part anyway. They would rather sell their support services. People who use CentOS want a free, open source operating system and our willing to support themselves rather than rely on commercial support. We help Red Hat isolate and fix bugs in their commercial offerings. I don't think either party is being selfish with this kind of symbiotic relationship in place.