Memo: Red Hat Linux & Fedora (fwd)

[Mark W. Jeanmougin]

Here is a memo that I sent to my employers where I outline how we will be 
affected by the Fedora / Red Hat merger.  Like many other companies out 
there, we have RHL deployed without paying Red Hat for support.

Hopefully others will be able to correct any factual errors I have.  I 
hope that someone else may be able to use this to inform their management 
of upcoming changes.

Thanks,

MJ


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 13:52:47 -0400
Subject: Memo: Red Hat Linux & Fedora

This week, Red Hat and Fedora Project announced their merger.  Red Hat is,
of course, the US's largest distributor of Linux based operating systems.
"Fedora is a community project dedicated to building high-quality, 3rd party
rpms, for the Red Hat Linux distribution."  [1]

As a result of this merger, the future direction of the Red Hat Linux
project has changed.  Things aren't set in stone yet, but it appears that we
have reached the end of gratis Linux distributions from Red Hat.

Red Hat will continue to market, develop, and support their Red Hat
Enterprise software products specifically designed around the needs of large
corporations, such as ourselves.  The Red Hat Enterprise series includes
distributions tailored toward workstation use as well as two different
server distributions tailored to large or small servers.  The Red Hat
Enterprise series runs on seven different hardware platforms and has a
release cycle of 12 - 18 months to make things easier on enterprise system
administrators.

The old Red Hat Linux product is now becoming the Fedora Project.  Please
note that the name isn't set in stone yet.

The advantage to enthusiast users is that Fedora will provide more software
and it will be updated quicker to ensure that people are always using the
latest and greatest software.  End users will be able to make contributions
easily to improve the product.  This frees up some resources within Red Hat
to concentrate on the stability and scalability of the Red Hat Enterprise
line.

Red Hat does not intend to sell the Fedora Project through retail channels.
They've found that their current Red Hat Linux product, with it's 6 month
release cycles, is too difficult to make a profit on, in the retail channel.
By solely distributing Fedora electronically (and for no cost), Red Hat can
offer a product with short release cycles to keep the geeks happy.

Red Hat does not intend to sell support for the Fedora Project.  They will
support the Red Hat Enterprise products.  This is critical as we consider
that all released Red Hat Linux products have had their end of support dates
announced[2].  Red Hat Linux 9 goes out of support on 30 Apr 2004.  All
earlier versions go out of support at the end of this year.

There is talk within the community that the community will continue to
support the older Red Hat Linux products as part of the Fedora Project, but
that is still uncertain.  I cannot emphasize enough that there is community
interest in this.  If we want to continue to run older versions, we should
consider adding our support to this effort.

Of course, through the beauty of Open Source, third parties (such as IBM or
others) may consider to support whatever their customers are willing to pay
them to support.

The first release of Fedora Project Linux is not yet available.  It's due
out, well, "when it's ready".  At this point, we're hoping that'll be in
early November.  At that point, the name, support, and distribution methods
will be set.

Feel free to address any questions to me.

MJ


[1] http://www.fedora.us/index-main.html
[2] http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/errata/

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