FC2 Issues

[akonstam at trinity.edu]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2004 at 01:06:08PM -0400, Sean Estabrooks wrote:
> 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
> 

In someways what you say is true but RedHat offerers no more support to
me with fedora that it offered on any other distribution. In fact what
happened is something I have said all along. You can not make money
selling open software which you also give away. The truth is there is
a distribution of Linux called Centos which is RH Enterprise Linux
fully free in binary and source form with out the proprietary extras.
So actually I could afford RedHat Enterprise Linux without paying
them. And get the support I have always gotten from user lists.- 
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
One Trinity Place.
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200

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