Free vs. pay versions

[Edward Ned Harvey]

> From: Rich Braun [mailto:richb-RBmg6HWzfGThzJAekONQAQ at public.gmane.org]
> 
> So I will pose this question:  does anyone here use SLES?  What makes
> you opt
> to pay for it rather than use the open version?

Not directly related to your question, but similar ...

I have applications to support which only run on RHEL.  So we run them on
Centos and RHEL.  Works fine.  The decision for us to buy RHEL versus run
Centos is based on hardware.

Redhat releases most, but not all, of the packages they use to build RHEL to
the public.  There's a small amount of proprietary.  One of the proprietary
things is necessary for Dell OMSA to be able to configure the RAID card
while the OS is running.  The Centos free alternative isn't sufficient ...
Same is true to apply Dell firmware updates, and some other things.

Wherever we run on generic hardware, or VM's, we use centos.  Wherever we
run directly on Dell hardware, we use paid RHEL.