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
They're playing by the rules, contributing a ton of code and were at one time, at least, a driving force behind Linux viability as a server for commercial uses.
They've committed a lot of redeeming acts, but I'm not sure if it's enough to counter years of PulseAudio shittyness, until it finally worked for most cases (except that networked audio over WiFi still stinks, and then some), same for SystemD (which I can live with, it just divided the community for no good reason),... Basically not telling Lennart Poettering to cut it out with monolithic constructions, and instead doing things the UNIX way.
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've committed a lot of redeeming acts, but I'm not sure if it's enough to counter years of PulseAudio shittyness, until it finally worked for most cases (except that networked audio over WiFi still stinks, and then some), same for SystemD (which I can live with, it just divided the community for no good reason),... Basically not telling Lennart Poettering to cut it out with monolithic constructions, and instead doing things the UNIX way.