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Comment by MatthewPhillips | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a really bad idea to me. You can't charge for something that the user can just build themselves for free. Someone else is just going to distribute the binaries. And so what do you do about your repos, are those just for paying customers as well? You wind up with 2 Ubuntus in this scenario, both weaker than the 1 today.

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> You can't charge for something that the user can just >build themselves for free.

Um, sure you can. Ubuntu, RedHat, and Slackware are quite successful at this already. Pat Volkerding has been doing it for as long as linux has existed (Slackware). Yes, someone can distribute the binaries, but they can't use the {Ubuntu, RedHat,Slackware} name.

> You can't charge for something that the user can just build themselves for free.

Why not?

Centos does the same, isn't Redhat making money ?

The thing RedHat sells isn't the OS itself.

This is a little bit off-topic but... they removed basic support and now there's a "self-support subscription" option instead for $350.

If you don't get support for that subscription, I can't see a difference worth $350 between RHEL self-support subscription and CentOS.

EDIT: ate a word

EDIT 2: self-support desktop subscription is just $49. But the point is the same: no support.

> If you don't get support for that subscription, I can't see a difference worth $350 between RHEL self-support subscription and CentOS.

* Access to the RHEL repositories, with faster updates than CentOS or alternatives.

* Ability to upgrade to supported tier.

* Possibly: access to RHN pages with their forums, documentation, etc?

None of which would be huge advantages to me, but I can totally see the potential value.

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