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The commercial open source model may work for Redhat because it caters to enterprise customers who need commercial support, but this is somewhat intellectually
by superuser2 12y ago
The commercial open source model may work for Redhat because it caters to enterprise customers who need commercial support, but this is somewhat intellectually dishonest. Redhat doesn't sell software; it sells support. If you don't want support, you get CentOS.
If your users are ordinary people - not corporations that need to placate their boards - there is no reason to expect that you would be able to pay for development time by selling support.
- slashdotaccount 12y agoIf I wasn't able to contribute to the FLOSS I use, I would definitely buy Redhat even if I didn't need their commercial support, simply because they fund a lot of development work on the FLOSS I use.
- ternaryoperator 12y ago"...this is somewhat intellectually dishonest. Redhat doesn't sell software; it sells support." Not seeing the dishonesty. RedHat spends huge amounts of money developing software. They sell one version with support, they offer a slightly different version for free. What's dishonest?