[Centos] RHEL question

Peter Arremann loony at loonybin.org
Tue Jan 25 01:56:27 UTC 2005


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.



More information about the CentOS mailing list