> > Anyway, when a company wants to run a copy of RHEL, they are likely to > > also want the support & quality assurance that comes with the real > > McCoy; they are accordingly willing to pay. And the advantage of > > GPL'ed software in this case is the openness, transparency, and > > (usually) stability of Linux. Also, with Linux there is no vendor > > lock-in and mandatory upgrade treadmill. Those qualitites are also > > worth paying for, if you are a serious company. > > That pretty much sums up RH's business model ;-)
Indeed. And I think it's a good model, too. On one hand, you don't screw your customers for profit (like M$ does), and on the other hand, you have enough revenue that you can fund and support continued development of Linux. [1] What I don't understand is why somebody would spend all the time and effort to strip out RH logos from RHEL just to distribute it into a marketplace where there are already thousands of free Linuces already. Somebody with that much time and energy would be better utilized for improving gEDA and other F/OSS EDA apps! Stuart [1] If only there was an equivalent model for EDA applications.
