August 31st, 2010
Changes to the Red Hat License Fee
We want to make you aware that beginning in September, due to a change in our underlying subscription arrangements with Red Hat, we can no longer offer a daily pro-rated billing option for RHEL instances. Slicehost customers will be billed for RHEL instances on a monthly rather than pro-rated daily basis.
However, the total cost of service for most RHEL customers will likely go down under the monthly billing model.
Both Rackspace Cloud and Slicehost will begin charging RHEL customers a monthly $20 licensing fee. This license fee won’t be prorated, so every Slice you spin up with RHEL will be subject to a full month’s license fee.
What this means for Slice customers:
• Instead of being billed for your RHEL license on a pro-rated daily basis, customers using Red Hat will be billed on a monthly basis (normal monthly billing cycle).
• The Slice itself will continue to be billed on a pro-rated basis - this only affects the RHEL license.
• The new fee for RHEL has been reduced to $20 per month per Slice.
• Every Slice you spin up with RHEL will be subject to a full month’s license fee, no matter how long you use it. If a Slice with RHEL is running for any portion of a month, then you will be billed for that month’s license fee.
Thank you for your understanding as we shift to monthly billing for RHEL users. If you would like help understanding how this might affect your personal usage please feel free to submit a ticket via the SliceManager, email us (support@slicehost.com) or pop into chat 24/7.
September 1st, 2010 at 04:00 PM Anon Ymous
Some damn hefty markup there. I paid $14/month for RHEL when I had a hosting co.
September 3rd, 2010 at 12:51 AM anonymous too
I also paid 0.86 cents a liter for petrol back when I had a hillman hunter :D
October 7th, 2010 at 11:10 PM Austin
Why would anyone want that? Why would you pay for a Linux distro? Donate maybe, but pay?
November 12th, 2010 at 07:10 AM peroksid
Because we have “enterprise” soft compatible with RHEL, not with Ubuntu.
December 10th, 2011 at 09:58 AM Thomas
You pay for the support, not for the OS. If there is a problem with the OS that is supported by Redhat, you can call them and they will assist.
With Microsoft, you pay for both. You buy the OS, and then if you have a problem that requires you to call them, you have to pay for support as well.
Of course, if you install CentOS, then you’re getting a rebranded version of the exact same OS, but you don’t pay extra because you don’t pay for support.