From: arne@vajhoej.dk   
      
   On 10/13/2025 10:12 PM, Waldek Hebisch wrote:   
   > Arne Vajhøj  wrote:   
   >> On 10/13/2025 5:36 PM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:   
   >>> On Mon, 13 Oct 2025 16:38:38 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:   
   >>>> Support is easy. If you need support you pay.   
   >>>   
   >>> The thing is, expertise in a non-proprietary product is not confined to   
   >>> the company that makes that product. There is plenty of Open Source   
   >>> expertise available in the community that you can hire. If you rely on an   
   >>> outside company, particularly a large one, you know that inevitably their   
   >>> interests align with their shareholders, and sooner or later will come   
   >>> into conflict with yours (as happens with Microsoft, for example). If you   
   >>> rely on your own employees, that can’t happen.   
   >>   
   >> Enterprises with a need to document support can not just hire a random   
   >> consultant when the need arrive.   
   >>   
   >> They need an ongoing contract with a company with a SLA and a reputation   
   >> that indicates they can deliver in case it is needed.   
   >   
   > If company need paper then they have to pay for it.  They still can   
   > choose smaller company as source of support.   
      
   Sure.   
      
   But that smaller company needs to have a reputation that makes   
   the paper look credible in the eyes of internal and external   
   auditors.   
      
   > OS data that you found few years ago claims that vast majority of   
   > companies use Linux distributions for which support contract would   
   > be with third party.  Red Hat seem to be used by relatively small   
   > percentage of companies using Linux.   
   It depends a lot on how you are counting.   
   number RHEL instances / number Linux servers is not that big.   
      
   number on-prem RHEL instances / number on-prem Linux servers with paid   
   service by distro creator is pretty big. Likely over 50%.   
      
   So one side you can say that RHEL is only big in a small   
   part of the overall Linux server market, but its importance   
   goes far beyond what that indicates, because:   
   1) it is the market that generates most of Linux revenue   
   2) it has made RHEL *the* enterprise Linux distro - the   
       one that other copy   
      
   A lot of the servers not running RHEL do run either   
   commercial RHEL clones or free RHEL clones.   
   The latter being CentOS in the old days (before Redhat   
   messed that up) and today RockyLinux, AlmaLinux etc..   
      
   Arne   
      
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