<HTML dir=ltr><HEAD><TITLE>Re: OSI enforcement?</TITLE>
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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Tahoma size=2>Rick Moen [mailto:rick@linuxmafia.com] wrote:<BR></FONT><FONT size=2><STRONG><FONT face=Tahoma>></FONT></STRONG>Quoting Tzeng, Nigel H. (Nigel.Tzeng@jhuapl.edu):<BR><BR>>> Except that you assert that the legally equivalent binary that is made<BR>>> available via CentOS is not exactly the same set of bits and therefore<BR>>> is disqualified as a replacement in your scenario.<BR>>> <BR>>> Which is picking really tiny nits.<BR><BR>>Not to many enterprise users. Try telling them that CentOS is exactly<BR>>the same as RHEL without the latter's bundled support, except compiled<BR>>in a vaguely similar manner in a vaguely similar build environment, and<BR>>you will be thrown out of the corner office onto your ear -- and that<BR>>includes situations where the company has _no_ desire to ever invoke<BR>>bundled support.<BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>Unfortunately I don't have anything besides anecdotal evidence but SFGate</FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>did choose CentOS over RHEL. I've also been part of OS trade studies </FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>where deployment costs trumped RHEL support and other Linux servers</FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>distros won. This was for highly mission critical systems where I was a RHEL </FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>advocate. Although I would also have advocated CentOS instead had it been </FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>an </FONT><FONT size=2>option (for whatever reason it didn't make the downselect) since it IS </FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>functionally equivalent, equally zero cost to other alternatives </FONT><FONT size=2>with exactly </FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>the same RHEL advantages except support.</DIV></FONT><FONT size=2></FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>Within the DoD community, not picking RHEL/CentOS or SLES is sub-optimal</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>90% of the time.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><BR>>> Except you can. There's a reason that CentOS ranks above RHEL on<BR>>> distrowatch and google search trends. <BR><BR>>There's a reason Red Hat continues to sell copies at full retail even to<BR>>firms that have no desire to use its support services.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>But they don't do it for $20K per copy like I was paying for Solaris with </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>Silver support. Neither does Sun.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>And...um...anyone who pays full retail for RHEL for any kind of significant</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>deployment isn't even bothering to pick up the phone. Yeah, if you only</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>need one or two copies you might pay full retail. Although if you only need</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>one or two copies you often don't NEED enterprise level support.<BR><BR>>> I am also unsure of your point.<BR><BR>>OK.<BR><BR>>My point is that "copylefted commercial software is something only<BR>>stupid people pay for, unless they're paying for bundled services"<BR>>(paraphrased) is factually inaccurate.<BR></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>Well...I try not to use the word stupid in even semi-professional discussions.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>At least not on public mailing lists. :)</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>Your statement may be correct in the general sense given folks will pay for a</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>commercial license for things like MySQL because they don't want to open up</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>their source but I don't think that RHEL is a particularly good example. Especially </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>since nobody wants to buy RHEL 5 Update 1 gcc as a standalone product and </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>wouldn't likely pay any money for it even if RH offered it as a standalone product</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>like Sun does for it's compiler suite.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>However, given that gcc is free even Sun Studio now has an "express" version for</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>free. If you want "premium" support it's $1200.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>I wonder how many folks pay $1200 for Sun Studio 12? More importantly, how many</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>folks pay $1200 per seat for Sun Studio out of their own pocket or project budget?</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>If it's someone else's pot of money I can see getting the support as a hedge or maybe</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>one copy out of 20 I might get support for on a mid-sized project. I don't see dropping</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>$24K to get 20 seats though like we used to have to do.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>And its not copylefted nor, as far as I rememeber, open sourced but Sun's effective</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>sale price for that piece of software is now zero.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>Nigel</DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>