On Mon, 2004-02-02 at 10:36, Chris Gehlker wrote:
> On Feb 2, 2004, at 9:29 AM, Derek Neighbors wrote:
> 
> > If they instead make Red Hat Advanced
> > Server have a license that requires money but includes the support.  
> > Yes
> > you can argue they are selling "support".  I would argue they are 
> > "locking
> > you in" to their support.  Subtle difference perhaps, but I do believe 
> > it
> > to be real.
> 
> Hmm... It seems like I can get the Red Hat products with their 
> trademarks removed very cheaply with minimal Googling. Branding is 
> important. There have been studies recently showing that auto dealers 
> make most of their money from their service departments. Now most 
> people know that there are better and cheaper mechanics outside the 
> dealers but there are also crooks and incompetent mechanics out there, 
> so a lot of people stick with the 'official' service.
> 
> It seems to me that one interpretation of Red Hat's actions is that 
> they are just trying to set themselves up as the 'factory authorized' 
> service provider.
---
yes, there are things like whitebox that are based on RHEL

since you are fond of metaphors, I will give you another...
using a RHEL derived distro is like a woman going to the dance with one
guy and leaving with his brother, the genetics are the same but this
could be the evil twin. Regardless, this isn't leaving with the one who
brung ya'  More specifically, you have now introduced more
'uncontrollables' into the equation. You now rely upon Red Hat and
another 're-packager' to make updates. You now contribute bug fixes,
etc. to another message base. You cannot be certain that what you are
using is indeed RHEL. So in essence, in your zeal to reap the harvest of
the fruits of the trees planted by Red Hat, you aren't willing to
provide water or fertilizer to the plant (a second metaphor). In this
instance, it is only about the money.

And my last metaphor for this topic - my apologies to anyone who is
offended...there is an old joke.
A man offers $ 1,000,000 to a woman to have sex with him and she thinks
about it and says yes, she probably would do that. He then says, how
about oral sex for $25 and she asks, "what kind of a woman do you think
I am?" The punchline obviously being, "We've already established what
kind of woman that you are, we are now simply negotiating the price."

Choosing a distro is a symbiotic relationship - even just using a distro
means that you are testing their packaging, their methods, their
distribution etc. If you feel that it is acceptable to take a commercial
distro that is repackaged and thus, not able to provide accountability
to the distro itself, then we already know what you are and now we are
only haggling about the price.

Craig