> Red Hat didn’t have to pay for the bulk of the development of Linux. As soon as it was clear how Linux could change the world of computing, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Intel, and many other companies added full time developers to the project. If Red Hat had to pay for all the development of Linux, it would never have become what it is today.
This is a misunderstanding of how the development of Linux works. It's not a project in the conventional sense and never has been. Anyone can contribute as long as their code is good enough and solves a problem or adds a feature. But because the code is under the GPL, no-one can take others' work and make it proprietary. It creates a level playing field for customers because OS development is not their core business but rather just a cost of doing said business.
It's also a misunderstanding of the value Red Hat brought - and still brings - to enterprise software. A subscription buys you enterprise support, certification with third party vendors and the guarantee that Red Hat will distribute improvements to the kernel in a predictable way for you.
> Red Hat will distribute improvements to the kernel in a predictable way for you.
I'd hope that means you just get read access to their linux.git if you're paying them.
If you're not paying them, in order to get access to the Red Hat 7 kernel source, there's git repo that houses a reference to a xz-compressed tarball that you download from another site which you piece back together to get a .src.rpm - inside of which is a the raw kernel.org source and a monolithic patch file.
I would also call that predictable (and thus, thankfully scriptable) process, but it's pretty convoluted. Actual git access to kernel source would be preferable.
I wasn't really thinking of source access because I don't think the vast majority of their customers need it. I was thinking more from an enterprise point of view where you're a large customer who wants confidence that Red Hat has done a bunch of testing and validation on new kernels for their particular environments.
This is a misunderstanding of how the development of Linux works. It's not a project in the conventional sense and never has been. Anyone can contribute as long as their code is good enough and solves a problem or adds a feature. But because the code is under the GPL, no-one can take others' work and make it proprietary. It creates a level playing field for customers because OS development is not their core business but rather just a cost of doing said business.
It's also a misunderstanding of the value Red Hat brought - and still brings - to enterprise software. A subscription buys you enterprise support, certification with third party vendors and the guarantee that Red Hat will distribute improvements to the kernel in a predictable way for you.