As a long time CentOS (and prior to that, Fedora) shop, we have been taking an interest in these developments. The thing is, as a small business, one of the really appealing things about Open Source is that the friction of licensing is just not there. We could probably qualify for this program, but why would we want to have to worry about auditing ourselves to see if we needed to start paying at some point when we can just switch to Debian or one of the CentOS clones which are in the works? Not that Red Hat
It's absolutely true that you can switch to Debian or one of the CentOS clones in the works - and that's exactly why RedHat is doing this. They don't want new CentOS clones to emerge. But at least they're realizing that small businesses like yours are never going to pay. So the bet is that a free RHEL license will be appealing enough for new clones to ever get enough traction to matter. And that's not exactly evil, y'know. They're playing by the rules, contributing a ton of code and were at one time, a
Probably A No Here (Score:5, Interesting)
As a long time CentOS (and prior to that, Fedora) shop, we have been taking an interest in these developments. The thing is, as a small business, one of the really appealing things about Open Source is that the friction of licensing is just not there. We could probably qualify for this program, but why would we want to have to worry about auditing ourselves to see if we needed to start paying at some point when we can just switch to Debian or one of the CentOS clones which are in the works? Not that Red Hat
Re: (Score:5, Interesting)
It's absolutely true that you can switch to Debian or one of the CentOS clones in the works - and that's exactly why RedHat is doing this. They don't want new CentOS clones to emerge. But at least they're realizing that small businesses like yours are never going to pay. So the bet is that a free RHEL license will be appealing enough for new clones to ever get enough traction to matter. And that's not exactly evil, y'know. They're playing by the rules, contributing a ton of code and were at one time, a
Re:Probably A No Here (Score:2)
they're not the enemy
They broke a core commitment retrospectively. Hardly a friendly act.