Conversion to Linux

[Arthur Pemberton]

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 11:25 PM, Jeffrey Watts
<jeffrey.w.watts at gmail.com> wrote:
> I appreciate your position, but you have to realize that if you're using
> CentOS, you're not using it for the GPLed parts.  You're using it because
> Red Hat built and regression tested an extremely stable distribution.
> You're using it because Red Hat spent the time and money to make third party
> apps like Oracle run well on it.  You're using it because they took the time
> to integrate things like SELinux.
>
> If making a stable enterprise OS were trivial, there wouldn't be a CentOS
> project - folks would just use something else.  Every person that uses
> CentOS because it's "cheaper" are taking dollars away from Red Hat.  Like or
> dislike them, they are probably the single largest contributers of code to
> the Linux community (though I believe IBM is a close second now).  The
> dollars that folks spend to buy RHEL fund the Linux community directly.
>
> Sure, it's legal to re-apportion GPLed code, and Red Hat certainly doesn't
> stop the CentOS folks from taking their work.  But it's uncool.  Free
> Software is not about free beer.  If folks want an enterprise quality
> distribution they ought to support the company that worked hard to provide
> it.  If you want to use RHEL and don't want to pay for it, I would recommend
> that you use Fedora.
>
> As I said before, this is my opinion.  One can certainly do what they want,
> as it's certainly legal.  But I for one believe in investing in the Linux
> community with my wallet.
>
> Jeffrey.


It's a fair opinion. And I agree with it overall, even the "taking
dollars away from Red Hat" as that is more or less a fact.

However RedHat's pricing, while fair, is beyond the reach of some. It
would be good to see them provide a cheaper version with less/lower
priority support. Doing so would probably get them a piece of Centos'
pie as well.


-- 
Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin
( www.pembo13.com )