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by binary_ninja 1079 days ago
Don't get me wrong, I am very happy with this announcement, however it bothers me slightly when I see these kind of announcements with the tone of "we love open source and we want to give this to the community" when the rationale for this probably was "RHEL is going to lose a bunch of customers and we can profit off of that". If it was a non-profit they might convince me but as a Linux for enterprise-kind of company I am not fully convinced behind the motivations.
2 comments
whalesalad 1079 days ago
Likewise it grinds my gears when people think that a company should just do things to do them. At the end of the day they need to make a profit to be sustainable, to pay employees, to perform R&D, keep the lights on, etc. Altruism isn't enough on its own.

Why not both? Capitalizing on customers who need a solution while also helping the community? Not preparing for an influx of new business is a foolish business decision.

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AviationAtom 1079 days ago
That is the freemium model and more or less the model that I thought the open source community had long ago agreed was acceptable. Open source development for free is cool with what spare time you have, but at a certain point you have to pay your own bills to keep a roof over your head, food in your belly, maintain your health, and actually be able to enjoy your life. Value added features and support have long been the way open source companies have been able to do that.
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binary_ninja 1078 days ago
Not sure if the comment was addressed specifically to mine. If it was: I am OK with companies trying to make money, that's what they are for. It was more about how they phrase things. If you are a company that truly has open source as a driver, then make whatever claims you wish, however if your company's main driver is revenue (as SUSE likely is) don't make business announcements with "WE LOVE OPEN SOURCE" as your main rationale, just say "there's an opportunity for our business to grow" or any other corporate wording.
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abrookewood 1079 days ago
When you see Oracle making similar claims, you just KNOW that the reason is money, not any sort of care for Open Source.
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