Most servers around the world run Linux. The same goes for almost all supercomputers. That’s astonishing in a capitalist world where absolutely everything is commodified. Why can’t these big tech companies manage to sell their own software to server operators or supercomputers? Why is an open, free project that is free for users so superior here?
I must admit, I’ve been too far removed from the volume licensing to remember how it worked. It was definitely cheaper than retail and I remember 2016 and beyond you paid by 2 physical cores each, at least for datacenter.
All I recall was that they changed the licensing terms twice in ~5 years, and the forced minimum of ~500 users for enterprise put one of my past employers into a bind.
I would not be surprised if they had changed it once or twice since.
They’ve dropped physical cpu licensing model and now you pay per vCPU/thread (unless they’ve changed it again). People would buy a host with 128 cores and use virtualization to cram it into one physical CPU. You’re not wrong that there’s enterprise packages to pay way less, but it’s still a nightmare and if you get audited you’re guaranteed to have to pay up some extra $ since nobody gets it right.
Even the microsoft VARs can’t make sense of it. A previous job (service provider) got audited 2 months after I left and it sounded like a total headache.
That was in 2018 or so, but I’m sure there’s something similar now. If they haven’t forced everyone to subscription licenses, that is.