sponsorship from RH ?

[Gilboa Davara]

On Sun, 2008-05-25 at 17:34 +0300, Balint Cristian wrote:
> Hello EPEL folks,
> 
>    Is it possible from RH side to sponsor me with 
> (lets say RHEL 5.X) license for be able to maintain
> properly the GIS interest group ?
> 
> 
> Wiki of GIS, list of packages which I maintain
> from booth professional reasons and hobby:
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GIS?highlight=(GIS)
> 
>   I would mention packages are quite picky and 
> hard to maintain, complexity is pretty high, I
> myself maintain for multiple reasons tham in fedora.
> 
>   Task is quite difficult without a RHEL desktop,
> frecvent ABI changes require to develop  sort
> of compat-* library, and its not so easy to test 
> product properly in the lack of properly licensed
> RHEL desktop. Unfortunatley upstream release cycle
> is faster than RHEL release one, and new futures are 
> always requested before a new RHEL product series.
> 
>    Just using blindly the plague client its near impossible
> to do this task, I personaly fail to do it for EPEL at highest 
> quality with version track and compatibility changes
> but its an easy task for fedora since there are no strict 
> rules, not to much care if radical upgrade is involved.
> 
>   I see GIS interest group as a good ground base for all
> GIS professionists, and finaly RH products could cover
> this professional area too, wich was completly uncovered 
> before i took the task, and i would like to keep it on.
> 
>   Also I would mention that other people make money 
> out of these packages and support, I  did it for free 
> of course, since these days it quite intersect with my 
> work and professional area in wich i am involved.
> 
>   Here is one example: http://www.gdf-hannover.de/
> 
> Personaly quite dissapointed how they support distros,
> but its personal opinion dont want any polemics with 
> tham, however I salute their initiative.
> 
>  Obviously i am a RH fan since 1996, quite difficult
> to distract my opinion and blame anything about 
> RHEL/Fedora quality.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Cristian.
> 

You should consider using CentOS. [1]
It's 99.9% compatible with RHEL.

- Gilboa
[1] http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=15