I also don't mind if they are "selling" nothing, or just a supporter icon. As long as they are transparent that that is all you are getting.

Or for server software it can be funded with support contracts.

Isn't this basically how Fedora and RHEL are? RHEL is paid for giving you support, updates, etc. While Fedora is FOSS. You just install it and they don't care what you do with it.

Yes! I completely agree. The distinction is, to me, utterly important: they aren't selling the software, they're selling the service. Hell, if they want to sell the option to get your bugs fixed on demand, great! That's enormously different than taking millions of developer hours spent creating OSS, sticking a label and name on it, and then reselling it as if you made any real contribution to the OSS community.

how the hell do you make something both open source and paid??

But even Red Hat offers that subscription for free for up to 16 machines

Yes, and I have the same opinion about Redhat.

No issue with their actual paid service levels; it costs them to run those, and they're providing value. Most corporations won't use software unless they have a telephone number to call when it breaks, and service level guarantees. That's worth paying for; it's a service. But the fact that they're charging for software that includes some that I wrote, and which RHEL got for free, and for which I receive no kickbacks, is inexcusable.

I bought SUSE Linux once upon a time. It was a physical CD and the packaging that I paid for. Maybe a little support was bundled, probably not. That was a time when the internet was slow for most and not an option for others, wifi wasn't ubiquitous (and if it existed, good luck getting the proper drivers loaded without internet), live distributions weren't really a thing yet, booting from usb was finicky and unreliable, and the install CDs would have the entire OS and basically all the software you could want to install bundled. These would have been the days before the fall of Napster and the rise in other "Linux ISO sharing tools". Ubuntu would even mail you like a half dozen physical CDs and some stickers just for asking and promising to share them in your community.

There's nothing wrong with buying the physical things or paying for support. That's not what this meme is showing though.

I've never bought a distro. I've paid someone for the CD and shipping, way back before ISOs and internet speeds at home made downloading it practical. But never have I "bought" for Linux. Every CD I got I could legally copy and give away; or charge for the service.

With few exceptions, what you were paying for the media, the effort of burning and shipping, and shipping. Even with companies like Redhat, what you paid for with Enterprise was service and support, not the software.

I seem to be having this argument frequently lately. Taking someone else's work, that they gave you for free, putting your own logo on it and then selling it to people is one of the most unethical things that isn't illegal that I can think of. Selling support services is entirely fair. Selling compute, bandwidth, and space, entirely ethical. But profiting off other's generosity? How do you justify that? Even if you're not a socialist or communist, taking a painting someone gave away and then turning around and selling it is disgusting and amoral. You've added no value; you're purely profiting on someone else's work.

RHEL never did to install it. To get any updates though, you have to provide a contract number.

Edit: 10 might be different, but I don't think it would be.

Not certain, I haven't installed red hat in several years.

What's this a reference to?

Great minds think alike