Haven't looked at RHEL in many years. Last time I checked, you couldn't download it without a paid up subscription. Maybe things have changed. Don't know and don't really care. Good to see the FreePBX folks getting out of the proprietary OS business. I guess that's a start.
As for PIAF and Incredible PBX, Scientific Linux works fine for our purposes with the identical code base and... NoGotchas!
So what you're saying is that what you said prior has absolutely nothing to do with reality. The 'official' distro uses CentOS, not RHEL, nor have I ever heard anything regarding that happening. It wouldn't even make sense - if we're just going to predict random things occurring, I would actually say moving to Debian would be more likely, granted they solve whatever problems exist with Zend and whatnot (see? I can make unfounded predictions, too!). Saying a move to RHEL
IS happening is nothing but an attempt to scare people into doing whatever it is you think they should be - which, from what I can tell, is paying you to maintain your own distribution. Which is fine. I wish there
were more options. It would be spectacular if I had a reasonable choice - but the way you're going about this is beyond reason.
At best it maintains your ego as super-folkhero of the open telephony community, at worst you're trying to polarize a group that has no reason to be polarized, while profiting off whatever you can scrape to your side. I honestly can't see any other motivation at this point. You've turned a discussion about a literally open-source firewall module, for a literally open-source compilation of software and their respective configurations (of which you depend on for your own, repackaged, applications) into a grandstanding speech for your completely off-base predictions for the future of a competing product. It is bizarre; seriously, really bizarre. This is your forum, your space, you have a chance to lead the conversation wherever you want to, and this is where we are.
I'll be super clear for anyone that didn't read between the lines there.
The FreePBX distro, available from freepbx.org as an ISO, uses CentOS, not RHEL, and does not require any amount of paid subscriptions or anything else to Redhat. None. You are welcome to download, install, and use it 100% freely, without paying a cent to anyone. You're able to download, install, and maintain the same software on most other distributions; the difference is the suite of software used to license and validate commercial, non-OSS modules is currently available using CentOS 6.x (don't quote me on exact versions, I don't know off hand and don't really care - it's so irrelevant to this conversation it hurts). CentOS is not a proprietary OS any more than anything else - as I'm writing this, I'm installing PIAF on a CentOS 6.5 VM. There is literally no difference in the underlying OS; I can install FreePBX from source and have the same functionality as the official distro would. I'm going to curse now, because I don't know how else to handle the situation - what the fuck does "Proprietary OS business" mean? Let's check what CentOS says:
CentOS Linux is a community-supported distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by
Red Hat for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). As such, CentOS Linux aims to be functionally compatible with RHEL. The CentOS Project mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork. CentOS Linux is no-cost and free to redistribute. Each CentOS version is maintained for up to 10 years (by means of security updates -- the duration of the support interval by Red Hat has varied over time with respect to Sources released). A new CentOS version is released approximately every 2 years and each CentOS version is periodically updated (roughly every 6 months) to support newer hardware. This results in a secure, low-maintenance, reliable, predictable and reproducible Linux environment.
But who reads wikis. I asked in #centos:
9:30 PM <lorsungcu> Hello; just curious; would any of you describe CentOS as being 'proprietary'?
9:32 PM <Motoko> I woulnd't.
9:32 PM <Motoko> wouldn't.
9:33 PM <Motoko> You can rebuild everything from the provided source code.
Disclaimer: I don't know that guy, nor does he know I posted this. Yes, I'm being petty. Let's move on to the next reply:
As for whether you'll have to pay to use the FreePBX Distro, one thing is clear.
You will not be able to redistribute it. Not much to like about that.
You will not be able to redistribute _what_? Stop linking to your ad-infested blog. Say what you mean, and be specific. If you're referring to something commercial, that someone made for-profit, and outside the realm of the GPL or whatever you think is going on, then no, you can't just redistribute others' work because you feel entitled to their efforts. It doesn't work that way. So again,
be absolutely specific, preferably in a bulleted list, about what you think you are entitled to that is not being provided. I can't respond to your blog, and I will not give you the ad revenue of another click.