Fate of RedHat

[Gary Stainburn]

On Sunday 22 February 2004 11:56 pm, Steve wrote:
[snip]
>
> People get very agrivated over this and feel RedHat has betrayed them by
> trying to work toward a more commercial focus and feel this is
> justification to tell the world that they intend on moving to <insert
> other distribution from the list of hundreds here>
>
> Someone should write a FAQ.

I think that you will find that it not what redHat did that has upset people.  
Everyone who works does it for one reason only - to earn a crust.  What has 
upset people has HOW they did it.

Ever since version 3.something which was the first RH I bought, the model has 
been (roughly) release a major version change at a binary change.  They 
release minor versions at significat bug fix or software update stages. (I 
soon learned to never buy the .0 release).

This has happened all the way up to RH7.3 which is what I am still running on 
the majority of my boxes.

Then RH8.0 came out and everything looked rosey.  The problem then was that 
the next release was RH9 (note the lack of a .0).  This is where the problems 
(and cries of woe) started.  Two areas became of concern:

I don't know the exact support terms, but I think it was something like 'we 
support the current + previous version'  This meant that support for 6.x was 
cut dead, and support for 7.x shortened.  Also, the timing of the 
announcements was very poor, in that it gave many people time to purchase RH9 
before being told that it's support would be pittyfully short.

People who went to qualify as a RHCE had a similar problem (I think, never 
agreed with anyone being called and 'Engineer' under such a sustem as this - 
try having this conversation with an electrical engineer or a construction 
engineer and see what they think).  The qualification only covers the release 
current at the point of the exam, plus the next release. This means that the 
people who have spent a lot of money have been short-changed.

As I said above, I can understand why RH have decided to use a new business 
model.  I'm not an accountant, and have no access to their accounts, but I'm 
sure this new model looks more financially rewarding.

However, I do believe that their actions have affected the credibility of 
Linux and have done the fight no good at all.  I have commercial clients who 
I know have stopped thinking about Linux because the only benefit visible to 
accountants has gone.

On a personal note I have not yet looked into prices of the current offerings 
so I can't comment, but if Fedora is basically a replacement for RawHide I 
won't be using it on any of my production boxes.

Unfortunately, - and I know these comments are being scathed and ridiculed 
elsewhere - I will now have to start looking at other dists.

-- 
Gary Stainburn
 
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