On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 11:25 PM, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts@gmail.com> wrote:
I appreciate your position, but you have to realize that if you're using CentOS, you're not using it for the GPLed parts. You're using it because Red Hat built and regression tested an extremely stable distribution. You're using it because Red Hat spent the time and money to make third party apps like Oracle run well on it. You're using it because they took the time to integrate things like SELinux.
Which they are morally entitled to do because that was the deal that all the contributors made when they donated code to the components RH uses to build that distribution. In the case of SELinux, they get to integrate work done by the NSA, funded by our tax dollars.
When someone pays for RHEL, they get something that CentOS users don't get: If there ever is a problem, they have support from the very organization that did that integration and testing, and therefore has the institutional knowledge that no other will. What CentOS makes available for free is advertising for Red Hat's true product: Its people.
(I can't claim this observation is original. If you have not yet read ESR's "The Magic Cauldron", I encourage you to do so. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/magic-cauldron/magic-cauldron.html)
Fundamentally, I do not see any theory of morality that makes CentOS immoral while still keeping Red Hat itself moral. In the context of persuading PHBs to use Linux, any discussion of such a theory only plants the seeds of doubt as to the morality of the entire Linux ecosystem. We already have a huge problem with people who have been conditioned by the BSA to the idea that using someone's software without paying them (money) for it is inherently "wrong". The GPL says you pay those people back by paying your own users forward. That is the basis of our community.
So, rather than treading on ground that can become a FUDdy quagmire, I would prefer telling those PHBs that an enterprise can legally AND ethically run CentOS on non-production systems, where no support from the Red Hat will be desired, while paying for RHEL on those mission-critical servers. That is an advantage that RHEL has over proprietary OS licensing models.
And while it's equally true that CentOS can be run on production systems, again without support from RH, I wouldn't suggest doing so. If your business depends on those systems working, you'd better have the support in place to keep them working. That, however, is not a moral argument, but a practical one.