On Wednesday, March 09, 2011 11:45:06 am Les Mikesell wrote: > And if you are running Centos the one thing you > don't need is to pay for extra licenses to cover the backup/development > instances.
And this is significant, and really highlights the reasoning of the CentOS team in 'bug-for'bug' binary compatibility with the upstream EL. That is, in your hypothetical 'three of everything' approach you'd run a fully entitled copy of the upstream on the production unit, and save costs by running CentOS on the backup and the backup backup. This is another fine financial point, and I'll not use the semi-derogatory 'bean counters' thing, because some money really is cheaper than other money, and I'm not making that up, it is reality. In particular, capital can be donated, but rarely will opex be donation-driven. I have quite a bit of donated capital here, capital that I don't have replacement capex budget for. Also, many grants are awarded with 'capex-only' stipulations in the awards; it is a violation of the grant agreement to use that grant money on opex. Likewise, there are some grants that have exactly the opposite stipulation, and there are a few that have both, and have further direct versus indirect opex stipulations. The point is that CentOS saves on opex; not personnel opex, but subscription opex. Support subscriptions are opex, not capex. And while that fine of a point might be lost to some, it is a point I deal with on virtually a daily basis. I literally have to think about that distinction, and the various grant stipulations for monies that fund my salary, when filling out my biweekly timesheet; though salaried I am, that salary is funded between several grants, and most of those have different direct versus indirect cost budgets. And helping keep things simpler is something that CentOS has helped me in significant ways. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
