Fedora Project: Announcing New Direction

[Mark Mielke]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 09:22:26PM +1000, Paul Gear wrote:
> - Provide RHEL binaries & ISOs by download as per current RHL.

How would providing RHEL binaries and ISO's for free improve the situation?

Would you prefer if RedHat closed its doors permanently?

If you really feel so strongly about it, be an entrepeneur of sorts, grab
the sources from RedHat's site, produce the binaries, and distribute them
at cost, or with a small take. The GNU license that most of the software
RedHat distributes guarantees you this right.

If you can break even, you've demonstrated that you were right all along.

If you can't, what you are asking is for somebody else who is
experienced in the field, who has recently decided that this is *not*
the way to go, to take the risk, without any personal responsibility
on your part for your suggestion.

I don't buy into this 'companies must give out everything for free, and if
we need support, we'll pay for it'. Organizations given this option, more
often than not, choose not to take the support option for *some* invented
excuse, which usually includes 'well I can't afford the minimum support
package that you offer, but I do wish I had support', or in your case,
'well I can't afford the minimum support package that you offer, but I do
wish I had the binaries'...

I think it is perfectly reasonable for the open source community to
work on something like Fedora, get Fedora for free (not for free, when
you look at it this way), and leave RHEL for the user base that
requires support and a longer release cycle.

Perhaps I'm biased as I *hate* the longer release cycle.

mark

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