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RHEL (was: Re: gEDA-user: More footprint stuff)



[Mozilla's given up on threading, so new subject]

Stuart Brorson wrote:
Anyway, when a company wants to run a copy of RHEL, they are likely to
also want the support & quality assurance that comes with the real
McCoy; they are accordingly willing to pay.  And the advantage of
GPL'ed software in this case is the openness, transparency, and
(usually) stability of Linux.  Also, with Linux there is no vendor
lock-in and mandatory upgrade treadmill.  Those qualitites are also
worth paying for, if you are a serious company.

That pretty much sums up RH's business model ;-)


Indeed.   And I think it's a good model, too.  On one hand, you don't
screw your customers for profit (like M$ does), and on the other hand,
you have enough revenue that you can fund and support continued
development of Linux. [1]

But RHEL costs ~$800 - $2500 *per year* for usable versions. If that's not "screwing your customers for profit", then I don't know what is. I have no problem with profit, but this model doesn't make sense. I would happily pay a few hundred $ for a stable professionally-supported and developed distribution, but I'm not paying it every year. M$ is much cheaper, and you can get updates indefinitely at no cost.


BTW, if anyone has a link to the stripped-out version, I'd appreciate it. I spent some time looking a couple of months ago and found nothing.

Evan