[Info-vax] Thoughts on VSI Community License Program

[Scott Dorsey]

Dave Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>
>It is my understanding that Red Hat charges for support, and not fees 
>for using Linux.  Perhaps I'm mistaken?

If you want to run the Red Hat distro, which consists of the Linux kernel
and a lot of other open source stuff that is bundled in, as well as some
commercial stuff, then you have to pay them money.  Once you have paid
them money for the distro THEN you can pay them additional money for support.

You don't have to run the Red Hat distro.  You can build your own distro
from the diverse sources out on the internet (and the Centos and Fedora
people do just that).  But if you don't run the Red Hat distro you don't
get Red Hat support, and you don't get any guarantees that whatever you are
running is compatible with Red Hat.

Red Hat's basic model is to take open source code of various sorts, bundle
them together into a combined distribution that has been tested to make sure
everything works together, and sell it for money.   They also make money
doing support but that is not their only revenue stream.
--scott
-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."