FC2 Issues

[Sean Estabrooks]

On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 09:04:32 -0500
akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:


> Statments like this make me angry. The people who distribute fedora
> work for RedHat. RedHat distributes Fedora. Fedora is a redhat product
> used to test ideas that
> will be put in the Enterprise system. Tom got over heated but many of
> us who can't afford to buy 80 RedHat Enterprise systems must rely on
> Fedora. And there is no reason that known bugs can't be fixed.
> 
> We can't afford to licence 80 Windows XP systems either.
> >

Ahh, it finally comes out, its not about you wanting to provide
testers, its about what _you_ need!

Fedora is not a product, it's not for sale, you can't buy it.   
RedHat is under no obligation to provide you with ANYTHING let alone
something you can afford.  RedHat has educational offerings that
are very reasonably priced.  There are other distributions that
are available as well.  You could make your own distribution
too.  You seem to think RedHat owes you something.  Very Strange.

RedHat is probably the victim of their own success, they "trained" 
way too many people into thinking Linux was a no-cost operating 
system.   They didn't do a good job letting people know it was 
about freedom, not necessarily zero dollars.  Way too many people 
ended up thinking it was a freebie, taking it for granted and not 
being the least bit thankful or respectful.

Now we have to listen to people make post after post complaining 
that there is no free ride any more.  Guess what, there never was, 
you just misunderstood the situation.  Now it's time for people to 
get the message.   Will some people leave RedHat?  Yes of course 
they will, but they weren't the people keeping RedHat in business 
anyway.   People who enjoy the benefits of RedHats contributions 
(and that's all Linux users, including users of other distributions) 
should hope for their financial success.

The overreaction to a few bugs making it into a Fedora is stunning.   
Future releases will be better, well who knows some may be worse, but 
that hardly matters.   Fedora is still a great contribution from 
RedHat; but that doesn't mean its for everybody.   If Fedora isn't 
appropriate for your needs, find something that is.

Regards,
Sean