long term support release

[Patrice Dumas]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 01:38:37PM -0300, Horst H. von Brand wrote:
> Patrice Dumas <pertusus at free.fr> wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 10:31:44AM -0500, Jesse Keating wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > > you know, there is a Fedora based release that promises long term
> > > stability and quality...
> 
> > I know, but in that case there are customers, it is very different,
> > there are contracts.
> 
> People associate a name (Fedora, or RHEL, or IBM) with a certain
> expectation. 

The RHEL and IBM names are very different from the Fedora one.

> If I came along and offered you a support contract for RHEL at
> half the price, and promising the same level of support, would you take it?

Here you are meaning that Fedora can offer support for free. It isn't
the same issue. Of course reputation is important. And Fedora reputation
may be good. And price doesn't make the reputation, but it creates
obligations a reputation doesn't create.

> I would't... I trust RH, the contract with them is just in case something
> goes wrong (and I trust that /not/ to happen, going to court to enforce the
> contract etc is expensive, and not exactly helpful for my business).

But can be necessary, and in contrast to what would happen with fedora
you should win.

> What you would be squandering here is Fedora's good name. All for "OK,
> let's LTS this one. But someone critical might get bored in a month or two
> and drop it with little warning, so take care"?

Don't call it fedora then. Once again the name is not the issue.

> Again, the offer was made repeatedly to (help) set up a SIG, contact
> interested parties in founding an LTS, ... and /nobody/ has stepped
> forward. Telling, ist't it?

It doesn't tell anything since it was also said repeatedly that people
wanting to do it will have to do it against the will of the fedora
rulers (the boards, infrastructure team...).

--
Pat