[CentOS] Caught between a Red Hat and a CentOS

[Ron Blizzard]

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 2:04 AM, Ian Blackwell <ian at ikel.id.au> wrote:
>
> Ron Blizzard wrote:
>> I wonder if Red Hat has ever considered limited, paid support options
>> for CentOS?
>>
> I think that would be brand cannibalisation and self-defeating.  To
> charge a lower support fee for the same product with a different name
> would surely only devalue their prime product and lead to revenue
> decreases in the long run.

You're right, of course. I didn't think it out.

> Hopefully there are and will remain to be enough businesses who support
> Red Hat.  I know most of my customers would not be comfortable with a
> community support arrangement and so pay Red Hat's subscription fees.
> Thank goodness they do, because without them we wouldn't have CentOS.

I'm pretty sure most corporations will continue to pay to use Red Hat.
It's pretty tough to go the head of IT and tell them you want to use
an OS without a corporate support license. Support is a security
blanket, if nothing else -- and it's a place to lay blame if something
goes wrong. (Though there are some exceptions.)

CentOS has its niche -- pretty big "niche" actually.

-- 
RonB -- Using CentOS 5.3