Why redhat will never get another dime of my money.

[Ed Wilts]

On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 09:36:14AM -0800, Michael Halligan wrote:
> On March 15th, RedHat released a new version of rhncfg. This new
> version, typical with redhat, was not properly qa'd, and it brought
> our current development project to a grinding halt, making 100 servers
> that were due to be deployed wednesday of last week unusable.  

So you didn't properly test a new release that impacted 100 servers?
Shame on you...

> I check my e-mail. Sorry. We have to put this fix through regression
> testing, maybe on april 4th it will work.

So first you complain that they issued a release that wasn't tested
properly, and now that they want to test a fix, you're complaining
again?  Which would you like - a tested or untested release?

> I believe we paid $50k for satellite server, a server to run satellite
> server, and all of our provisioning entiltements & OS licenses. The
> irony here, is microsoft would have been cheaper. The other irony
> here, is if this one little package were open-sourced, instead of
> proprietary to redhat, I could have changed the ONE BROKEN LINE OF
> CODE in the software, rebuild the package myself, and install it.

Yes, you could fix the one broken line of code.  Would you then test the
result or just go ahead and implement in production? 

Which is cheaper is totally irrelevant at this stage.  Do you seriously
think that Microsoft releases 100% perfect software and has never issued
a patch that breaks production environments?

> Thanks redhat, you have assured that I am moving my infrastructure to
> SuSE & Zenworks, and that our future plans, as well as mine as a
> consultant, will not include a software distribution with the word HAT
> in it.

Unless you can develop testing plans, every other distributor will
eventually cause you pain too.  Nobody releases perfect software.  Not
Red Hat, not SuSe, not me, and probably not you.  

It doesn't matter if you buy a car or software - you need to test drive
each one and determine how it's going to react to what you're going to
do.  If it's important to you, test it first and develop a backout
plan. 

-- 
Ed Wilts, RHCE
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program