Media Inquiry - About the Red Hat Linux 7.x and 8.0 end of life notification mailed to RHN subscribers yesterday

[Warren Togami]

Sean Kerner wrote:
> Hi, I'm a RedHat 7.3 user - and a freelance techjournalist.
> I'm writing a story today about the official EOL sent to RedHat Subscribers.
> Just curious for some comments from Fedora Legacy project members and
> community about this official EOL.

First I would like to say that I am saddened by the sensationalism and 
especially feelings of "betrayal" that has been portrayed in the media 
over this EOL.  Everyone is acting like this is a Big Surprise.  The 
shorter 1 year EOL for RHL distributions was announced IIRC well over a 
year ago, and they even extended many of the 7.x distribution support 
long over 1 year to all end together at Dec. 31st 2003.  This should not 
have come as a surprise to everyone.

The company has even did a Nice Thing by releasing a final kernel errata 
for these distributions after their Dec. 31st deadline.  They didn't 
have to do that.

Beyond that point deadline, it has been our community's responsibility 
with this chance given by the Legacy project.

> 
> Can anyone tell me how many RHN users were mailed this notice?
> How many have 'converted'/ migrated their RHN up2date client to Fedora
> Legacy?
> and btw, How does an existing 7.x/8 RHN user convert up2date to use Fedora
> Legacy?

We have absolutely no way of knowing how many users are using Legacy 
repositories, because there are an unknown number of mirrors, and there 
is no feasible method of keeping statistics across all of these mirrors.

> Is someone that is running 7.x/8 without Errata support safe today?

No.

> Is Fedora Legacy 'ready' in this post EOL era?
> 

And no again, due to the lack of interested developers in the project, 
and the expectation of a "free lunch" by others who only idly sit back 
and wait for others to due the work for them.

http://www.fedora.us/LEGACY
A lot of potentially good work has been submitted a few dedicated 
individuals, but as of yet others have not followed through with the 
necessary work to finalize publication of several pending updates.  As I 
have stated in the past few days, the packages and website documentation 
need a lot more dedicated work in order to make this project a feasible 
alternative.

As I have stated, I personally gave a great deal of time to this project 
while I have no intention of actually using this software myself.  I had 
felt that it is important that this project exist and become 
self-sufficient, but I had long over-extended my allotted time and I 
must personally move on.  This is in the hands of the community, if they 
wish it to thrive.  It is not too late, neither is it too difficult.

Warren Togami