The Onyx Philosophy

Onyx is built around the philosophy that time is money-- your money-- and it should not be wasted. Uptime is everything, and Onyx-powered servers need to stay powered on for years, whether you need support or not. In order to accomplish this, we adhere to the following philosophies:

Our philosophy of Linux in the enterprise:

• Servers should have 100% uptime for several consecutive years. 
• Distributions should be purpose-driven and well engineered.
• Age and tradition are not valid technical justifications.
• Operating systems should be supported for as long as they are in use.
• Users should never be forced to upgrade -- or do anything, for that matter.
• Users should never have to pay for upgrades, patches, or documentation.
• Stable software should always be chosen over the "latest and greatest" versions.
• Perpetual and rolling updates leads users to update software without cause, often breaking applications.
• Perpetual and rolling updates leads to inconsistent versioning within so-called "releases."
  
• In order to maintain a strict sense of quality control, Enterprise Linux should never be community Linux.

Our philosophy of free software:

• Onyx is, and always will be 100% free -- both gratis and libre
• There will never be a license agreement
• You are free to use Onyx for any purpose
• You are free to study how Onyx works and adapt it to your needs
• You are free to redistribute copies of Onyx
• You are free to improve Onyx and re-release it for public benefit