Re: Plea for a reasonable RHASv3 license option

[John <spam debian merseine nu>]

On Saturday 30 August 2003 21:46, Féliciano Matias wrote:
> Le sam 30/08/2003 à 15:09, John a écrit :
> > On Saturday 30 August 2003 19:59, Féliciano Matias wrote:
> > > $349 + $96/year is a very very attractive price !
> > > Check all the good things there are in the box :
> > > - development tools
> > > - desktop (mail, browser, office suite, ...)
> > > - source
> > > - server service (bind, mail, web, database, ...)
> >
> > There is no licence charge for those, they're given away by their authors
> > for free. A charge for distribution, documentation and support is
> > reasonable.
>
> You can build a distribution like RHEL (6 arch) for $0 ?
> Do you know how many people involve around the Debian distribution ?
>
> And remember that RHL is free of charge.

That's substantially what I said about the software. However, according to Red 
Hat, Red Hat Linux is not just the software.

Read its Trademark guidelines.

>
> > > - support
> >
> > There's the problem. For many people, Red Hat does not offer a support
> > package they want.
>
> What do you want ?
> A better support or a less expensive support ?

A less expensive support package than Red Hat currently provides. It doesn't 
have to be so all-encompasing. Like the person who started this thread, I am 
able to sort out the technical aspects myself.

> It seems to me that this thread is mostly around the price. If the price
> is not right to you, pick another distribution.

Of course. My desktop's running Debian, and my servers too by years' end.

> If you find better than RHEL offer, that's great and perhaps RedHat will
> change somethings.
> If you can't find better than RHEL offer, this means that RedHat is
> right.

The original author said, and I agreed, that Red Hat does not provide a 
package the provides the level of support we wish, at any price.

Even free of charge, I don't see the value in RHN over what I can have without 
it, free of charge. Indeed, RHN may cost me more money than the use of its 
free-of-charge non-RHN channel.

Many small businesses here have Internet accounts where they have a "free" 
allocation, and they pay extra dollars if they exceed that allocation. The 
lowest extra charge in my area is 6c/megabyte - $60/gigabyte.

OTOH there are mirrors of much of the Internet attached to local networks 
(WAIX here) from which downloads are free, they are not charged against the 
monthly allocation.

Currently the Australian dollar is worth about 60c US, so halve those numbers 
to have a sense of what they mean in Euros or US dollars: double US prices 
for ours.

I can buy a new PC for less than RH wants me to pay for RHEL to run on it. RH 
offers more support than I want, it doesn't have a level of support available 
to me that I want.

The consumer grade doesn't have enough.



-- 
My bits for Taroon: http://debian.merseine.nu/taroon/