RHEL 6: how much for your package? You know how you can tell that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 is a real enterprise-class operating system? No, it's not because the word "enterprise" is in its name. What makes RHEL 6 an enterprise OS is that it now has so many features and add ons - and prices for each - that it is no longer easy to describe it in one sentence. But …
If you want Enterprise, you probably aren't very bothered about the cost. If you don't want that level of support, you'll probably be happy with CentOS 6, presumably due out in a month or two, and pay someone else for the software support if you don't have it in-house.
--"That's our decision to go with CentOS justified. It works very well at the barginous price of free"--
Depends on what you're using it for. If you put critical systems into production with no support and down the line things go wrong, who are you going to turn to? The CentOS guys will doubtless offer free advise when they have a spare minute, but often problems require code changes to fix. Who's going to do that for you, in a timely manner, when your customers are taking their business elsewhere and your senior management are demanding a fix? Maybe you've never had to use a Red Hat hotfix kernel to get you out of a jam. I have, and in those circumstances they earn every penny they're paid.
CentOS is a fantastic resource, and is good for many use cases. But it's the wrong choice if your business depends on it. I don't think even the CentOS guys would argue with that.
"for those that look at those prices and think WTF"
I've looked at RH many times over the years. Centos, the downstream community product based on RH, is very good. I've only had minor issues well within my mighty linux skills to handle. I want to support RH for doing such a good job and putting so much into FOSS but I can't justify per year per machine subs on something I don't need support for.
What they need is an alternative model whereby you can just buy a DVD set and be done with it until the next major release.... like Windows.
"What they need is an alternative model whereby you can just buy a DVD set and be done with it until the next major release.... like Windows."
What you probably want is self-support with all the add-ons which I didn't see as an option. You do want security updates don't you?
"What they need is an alternative model whereby you can just buy a DVD set and be done with it until the next major release.... like Windows."
I think that they tried that back in Red hat 7-8-9 days and it wasn't profitable. What can they offer for peanuts that you can't have for free with CentOS or Scientific Linux?
With open source you can add a lot of perceived value and charge a lot to a few (RH), you can add less perceived value and charge less (various other Linux support companies supporting CentOS or Fedora) or you can provide the results of volunteers rebuilding the sources without any guarantees but at zero cost (Centos).
Microsoft can do what it does because Windoze source is secret and no-one else can compete. What it does is more akin to running an illegal drugs "business" than an honest one. The first fix is free (comes with your shiny new PC) but you'll be paying for the rest of your life (locked in to Microsoft's proprietary formats). They've even locked just about every hardware vendor into selling Windoze with every system whether the customer wants it or not ... and worse, they get away with it because "there's no demand" for Linux!
free/cheap software and no confusing licence terms. Let's look at the table and see...
RHEL Server, Premium, Unlimited Guests x64 $3,249 a year or $9,260 for 3 years.
Hardly cheap.
RHEL Server, Premium, Unlimited Guests x64, despite saying "Unlimited guests", it wants to charge $307 a guest.
Hardly "no confusing licence terms".
Remind me again why I should care? Yes I know about CentOS but this is what RHEL want us to buy and I don't see much difference between this and Microsoft. Except that Windows Server works out cheaper for us...
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