Feedback on Fedora Core 4 test 2 review

[Behdad Esfahbod]

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005, Rahul Sundaram wrote:

> Its not possible to get an SLA for Fedora from Red Hat. People
> who want to sign up for SLA's usually also want a very long
> support lifecycle.  Trying to satisfy the customers who wanted
> longer release and support lifecycles and people want a spanky
> new Linux desktop was a tough balance. Red Hat decided to fork
> it up. It looked like a pretty rational decision to me though
> not everyone would agree with it. So calling the transition
> from Red Hat Linux to Fedora Project "treacherous" was hard to
> disgest.

The problem is not why Red Hat did what it did.  IMO the main
problem is that Red Hat totally hid the Fedora Project from its
users in the discontinutaion email that sent them.  It said
that's all, no free lunch anymore.  I was in the Real World Linux
Expo last week.  Again, there was the Red Hat booth, with no sign
or name of the Fedora Project.  Somebody giving a talk mentioned
it, just that.  To me, it seems like Red Hat is trying to hide
Fedora, in the fear that they lose their customers, while we all
know that it can't be true.  People do not buy Red Hat simply
because Red Hat does not provide a free version.  There are a
zillion free distros out there.  For more than 99 percent of
personal (nonbusiness) users out there, Fedora is at least as
good as Red Hat Linux was.  This 99 percent never received any
support from Red Hat.  Never ever.  But Red Hat makes it sound
like Fedora is something community driven so low quality.


--behdad
http://behdad.org/