G'day -
-----Original Message----- From: Russell Coker [mailto:russell@coker.com.au]
Red Hat sells support, not license to run their binaries.
You really should talk to some people who are involved in Red Hat "support" contracts.
Why, I've got you right here, speaking on their behalf. There's no need to use scare quotes - you get support. If you have a problem - you can call a guy, he will answer, and he will try to see your issue to resolution, with reputable organisation backing him. For business customers that apparently beats free support through forums and mailing lists.
If it was really just "support" then you would be able to get Red Hat "support" on a single system (and maybe one of the cheaper licenses) and reproduce all bugs/problems on that one system.
If only I have dealt with issues that are limited to a single system... It's never that easy.
Every company which has multiple RHEL systems with paid licenses is proof that they aren't just paying for "support".
You probably should talk to other people who are involved in Red Hat support contracts. Might as well find out why they are choosing to have support. See, they are not coerced into entering the contract - it's a choice. And if you don't like it - you can go to Oracle for a discount, or start using CentOS or Scientific Linux that make use of free versions of tools that come with RH support, such as RHN Satellite. At any rate, your theory about sufficiency of single-image support in the enterprise is absurd.
Linux is as capitalist as it gets. On par with BSD and Windows.
Repeating your mantra isn't going to convince any of us who have experience with using and developing Linux.
I don't think there's much need to convince - this is self-evident: Red hat, IBM, Oracle and hundreds of other companies created a lot of capital (and resulting wealth) on Linux, ad helped many others, including (horrors!) Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse who advised on and underwrote Red Hat's IPO. All that is essentially capitalist.
I've had over 20 years experience of using and developing Linux
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