On Thu, 13 Jun 2013, "Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS)" <slav.pidgorny@anz.com> wrote:
-----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.
The reason I use scare quotes is because while it's claimed that you are paying for support you are really paying for a software license masquerading as a support contract. The support is good (as I've already noted in this thread and others), but it's not what you pay for. You can't just get a copy of RHEL binaries and run them on all your systems.
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.
The basic Red Hat support doesn't cover such complex cases. If you want them to deal with that then you generally need some higher level of support which theoretically costs more. I say theoretically because you can get discounts when paying for RHEL licenses on multiple systems, so while you pay extra to have Red Hat people visit your office to fix things it could end up still being less than the list price for a sufficient number of RHEL licenses.
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.
Sure it's a choice, but they don't get a choice to pay for one RHEL license and install it on 1000 systems. There are lots of Red Hat customers who would do just that if they were given a choice. Is there a free version of RHN Satellite? That's all proprietary software so would need to be re-written from scratch. Also the choice of going to Oracle isn't really an option. Any organisation that would pay for RHEL support isn't going to switch to Oracle Linux to save some money so they are essentially stuck with RHEL.
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.
There are also companies that have created a lot of wealth publishing books that are out of copyright such as the Bible. If I found some examples of companies doing no business other than printing Bibles (and I'm sure that there are some of them) would that convince you that the Bible is "as capitalist as it gets"? The Linux kernel is licensed under the GPL. RMS believes that proprietary software shouldn't exist. The fact that Linux can be used for business is simply an issue of freedom for users as some companies are users. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/