I don't think it's RHEL's license in question, but what
about RHN's?
Isn't it RHN's license that states if you have one hooked up, you must
have all, or is it RHEL's?
As a support company, we don't need RHN. We need a solid OS (given the
that RHN is not the only vector for keeping RHEL solid). We would gladly
pay for a copy every year, or even a reasonable monthly fee for the rights
to deploy to our customer sites. Otherwise, it's actually advantageous, in
a business sense to support Microsoft. If you are paid to do support,
always deploy the most defective product (assuming integrity isn't a big
thing to you).
That being said, I recognize that RH needs to make money and we're happy
to work with them in that area. However, if I went to my customer and told
them that I had to tack on an extra $350/$800/$1500 to the install bill,
they'd tell me to jump in a lake. That's a lot of jumping considering that
we do hundreds of installs each year.
Is RedHat really telling me that I have to purchase support that I do not
need in order to provide my customers with a stable platform (where stable
== supported with updates and patches for >= 1.5 years)? As a business
person, this is a clear signal that it is time to look for another
distribution to deploy on. As a hacker, I don't care, I can support and
update the darn thing myself. Time is not free, so the business
personalilty wins out here.
-Chuck
P.S. I believe this is beginning to diverge from the topic. Where is a
good place to take this discussion?
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