FC2 Issues

[Craig White]

On Thu, 2004-06-17 at 21:27, akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
> 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.- 
----
There are others such as White Box...

Of course you are assuming:
- trust for these packagers
- that the packages haven't been altered, not possible since some amount
of alteration is required to not violate Red Hat trademarks
- that they will provide timely updates
- RHEL actually includes phone/web based end user support
- that if you actually call them for support that you might get it

These lists do not track with the RHEL products. RHEL uses older and
more stable versions of things.

But of course we are talking open source stuff...

Craig