[RULE] Re: Fedora replaces Red Hat Linux -- "unreliable" Red Hat??? (rant warning)

[Bryan J. Smith]

Quoting Martin Stricker <shugal at gmx.de>:
> Red Hat has become very unreliable since 7.3 (not the OS but
> the company politics).

Please explain this statement.  In what way has Red Hat's "company politics" 
become "unreliable"?

>From a developer standpoint, they continue to be one of the _very_few_ Linux 
distributors that are 100% GPL-anal, with a 100% redistributable version.

As far as their "business tactics," those remained _unchanged_ since their 
founding.  Bob Young will run Red Hat like the Microsoft of the Linux world, 
and there is _nothing_ wrong with that because the former offers a "balance" 
(whereas Microsoft does not offer such).

That's just cut-through, but smart business, combined with a 100% consumer-
focused product.

> My bosses definitely don't like this and are considering another
> Linux distro. :-((

Why?  Because Red Hat will no longer offer to support its redistributable 
version for 3+ years?  No matter how profitable their Cygnus division is, do so 
could cannot sustain that level of "loss" when it comes to unpaid support.

You have to ask yourself, who really needs a distro supported that long?  The 
ones who write and/or use binary-only applications!  That's who!  It only costs 
you _if_ you need that either as a developer or commercial user.

It makes no sense for Red Hat to maintain the support infrastructure at their 
_own_expense_ to support binary compatibility.  So they took the only road they 
could.  And now we have a platform with a 5-7 year binary compatibility 
lifetime that you can pay for.  Furthermore, _contrary_ to the media out there, 
the _all_ 5-7 year "enterprise" version release _are_ still based on the 12 
month "consumer" versions.

Red Hat has continued to evolve as a commercial Linux entity that is only 
providing the products that are requested, at the costs that will maintain that 
business model.  And that model is as a shrink-wrapped focused company with 
both enterprise and 100% redistributable releases that are developed under a 
100% GPL focus.

If you don't like it, Debian is an excellent community-driven distro that also 
has a 100% GPL focus.

It's all about what you are willing to pay for.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith, E.I.  mailto:null_address"http://lists.hellug.gr/mailman/listinfo/rule-list">b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://thebs.org
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