Fate of RedHat

[Mike Burger]

FWIW, I'm using FC1 as my front end firewall...haven't had a single 
problem with it.

On Sun, 22 Feb 2004, Dave Ihnat wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 22, 2004 at 12:22:07PM -0500, Thomas E. Dukes wrote:
> > I was just wondering if there is a general concensus (sp) of what everyone
> > is planning to do when RedHat 9.0 is no longer supported?
> > 
> > Are most going to the Fedora Project or paying to go to the Enterprise
> > Linux?
> 
> I can't recommend Fedora for a production site.  I can't even feel
> comfortable running Fedora for a personal site if I HAVE to trust it to
> keep running. Anecdotal reports aside, it just doesn't have any believable
> quality committment from RedHat; it's bleeding-edge experimental, by
> their own admission.
> 
> The problem I've found is that under the "new" model, the cost vs. risk
> differential, for at least small clients, isn't enough to wean them away
> from Microsoft.  Larger clients are as bad--unless they've some political
> commitment to Linux, they're looking at risks--both the uncertainty of
> new software packages + compatibility questions, and the legal risks from
> those morons at SCO--that make the choice questionable at the pricing
> models RedHat has in place for its Enterprise distros.
> 
> Probably the worst killer for RedHat is that you can't download RPMs
> from a different platform--that is, if you buy Professional Workstation,
> you can't DL RPMs for, say, sendmail, since that wasn't originally part
> of the package you bought.  (This confirmed again yesterday from a sales
> person at RH).
> 
> You didn't pay for it, you may say; neither did RedHat.  They _built_
> it, and integrated it--but the cost for just turning it into an RPM
> is marginal. Their fees, supposedly, are to cover the installation
> and ongoing support costs.  So how about allowing you to install an
> RPM that's not provided with the platform you bought, but you don't
> get support? Maybe a (much reduced) fee for DL access? But that's not
> an option.
> 
> This *is* a killer; what's the advantage of buying RedHat if you can't
> justify the expense of a particular platform, need some services RH
> has arbitrarily decided belong in another platform--but can't use RPMs
> and have to build packages not delivered with the platform from source?
> You'd just as well go with any other Linux distro; RedHat and RPM aren't
> helping you.  This model is ill-conceived, and has effectively means I
> can't recommend RedHat to small to mid-sized clients.
> 

-- 
Mike Burger
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