From a boss' point of view, it's simple. You pay for Enterprise. You don't for the free version. As they see it, you always get what you pay for. My shop just bought a dozen copies of ES. The software may be marginally more stable, but really you're paying (and paying, and paying... those are yearly support fees, NOT one-time purchase costs) for the time savings of the product. Why? Support, ease of maintenance thru Red Hat Network (a fabulous thing), and the ability to upgrade when _we_ want to, not when Red Hat cuts off the errata (incidentally timed to fall near the end of the school year, making it darn tough on us education folks). Also, the fact that the software and kernel get to mature a bit are a Good Thing. I'm not an idiot and am perfectly capable rolling our own software from source, but why waste my time on that and keeping up to date with all errata from the mailing lists when I can have Red Hat do it for me? There is a lot of man-hour savings in the support and red hat network components of Enterprise, which means I can spend my time working on my boss' pet projects. He gets stability, I get to keep my job. Sounds like it's worth something to me.
For those of you with a nationalistic bent who think that H1Bs are weakening the country, chew on this: historically throughout the world and in the US specifically, national success has always been linked to a country's ability to attract the best and brightest people from all over the world. The "brain drain" deplored by all developing countries is tremendously in the US national interest. These highly motivated, skilled people come to the US, contribute, and usually put down roots here. It's one of the reasons the US remains ahead of the technological curve. Holland became a superpower of the 18th century, an idea that sounds laughable now. Why? In large part because in 1685 the French expelled all the Protestants with the revocation of their the toleration act, the Edict of Nantes, most of whom went to Holland. These folks happened to be the most industrious and entrepreneurial merchants and yuppies of their day, and they and their children built the Dutch into one of the greatest naval empires in history. Moral: do anything you can to attract smart people to come to the US. Expand the H1B program, don't shrink it. They'll be enormous contributors to the country in all the years that follow.
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From a boss' point of view, it's simple. You pay for Enterprise. You don't for the free version. As they see it, you always get what you pay for. My shop just bought a dozen copies of ES. The software may be marginally more stable, but really you're paying (and paying, and paying... those are yearly support fees, NOT one-time purchase costs) for the time savings of the product. Why? Support, ease of maintenance thru Red Hat Network (a fabulous thing), and the ability to upgrade when _we_ want to, not when Red Hat cuts off the errata (incidentally timed to fall near the end of the school year, making it darn tough on us education folks). Also, the fact that the software and kernel get to mature a bit are a Good Thing. I'm not an idiot and am perfectly capable rolling our own software from source, but why waste my time on that and keeping up to date with all errata from the mailing lists when I can have Red Hat do it for me? There is a lot of man-hour savings in the support and red hat network components of Enterprise, which means I can spend my time working on my boss' pet projects. He gets stability, I get to keep my job. Sounds like it's worth something to me.
For those of you with a nationalistic bent who think that H1Bs are weakening the country, chew on this: historically throughout the world and in the US specifically, national success has always been linked to a country's ability to attract the best and brightest people from all over the world. The "brain drain" deplored by all developing countries is tremendously in the US national interest. These highly motivated, skilled people come to the US, contribute, and usually put down roots here. It's one of the reasons the US remains ahead of the technological curve. Holland became a superpower of the 18th century, an idea that sounds laughable now. Why? In large part because in 1685 the French expelled all the Protestants with the revocation of their the toleration act, the Edict of Nantes, most of whom went to Holland. These folks happened to be the most industrious and entrepreneurial merchants and yuppies of their day, and they and their children built the Dutch into one of the greatest naval empires in history. Moral: do anything you can to attract smart people to come to the US. Expand the H1B program, don't shrink it. They'll be enormous contributors to the country in all the years that follow.