Just some redhat musings

[Aaron Konstam]

On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 03:02:29AM +0200, Martin Stricker wrote:
> Kevin Waterson wrote:
> 
> > But what of the little guy? The guy who decided to throw his lot
> > in by developing applications for linux freely, in the hope that
> > he will be able to freely have access to linux just as he has made
> > his application freely available for redhat to bundle with its OS.
> 
> > With the advent of enterprise level RedHat products, can we expect
> > the community to still give freely of their time to fix and test
> > RedHat products, or, does RedHat adopt the tried and tested MS model
> > of testing its products on those who purchase it?
> 
> I understand what you mean. But the target of the GPL (the license under
> which most Linux software is published) is not to provide software free
> of charge. Instead you are getting the code for free, and you may change
> and distribute it freely! One example: You can download all the source
> RPMs of RHEL *for free*, compile them yourself, burn them onto CD and
> *sell* these CDs! Of course you cannot call them Red Hat (or any other
> trademark). When you look at other Linux companies you don't always get
> that freedom: Red Hat releases the source code for *all* their
> distributed software! When Red Hat bought Cygwin they put the
> proprietary Cygwin software under the GPL and published the source code!
> S.u.S.E on the other hand releases most of their self-developed software
> under a license which prohibits most of the use of it.
> 
> What some persons on this list (myself included) are complaining about
> is this: With RHL until 7.3 you got a very stable distro and updates for
> a long period of time for a very affordable price. This made RHL very
> attractive for small businesses and simple servers. With the
> discontinuation of RHL this part of the market is no longer supported by
> Red Hat, instead I would have to go either for Fedora Core (free of
> charge, but only 9 months of updates - I need at least the double time,
> better more - and the software may not be as stable and tested as I'm
> used to) which is fine for home users, or for RHEL which will provide
> the stability and long-term updates support I need, but is too expensive
> for my needs. Currently Red Hat's product portfolio is missing a
> mid-priced and mid-supported distro, which before was RHL. I need a very
> stable distro for my servers, and I cannot reinstall (and validate! a
> two-month procedure!) every half a year. So Fedora Core is not an option
> for me. RHEL would be nice, but is too expensive (and provides more
> support than I need). Either Red Hat gets out a mid-range product
> *soon*, or I need to switch my servers to another OS.
> 
> Best regards,
> Martin Stricker
> -- 
I think the analysis if Martin's above succinctly gets to the core of
the real problem. We at Trinity run 100 or so machines for student and
faculty use and the Fedora Core just won't do it for us. We have not
the staff for the fast turn around nor the money to purchase that many
RHEL copies. (I am not sure but I am assuming your would need a
copy bought for each machine. Correct me if I am wrong.)
-- 
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
715 Stadium Dr.
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200

telephone: (210)-999-7484
email:akonstam at trinity.edu