[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:b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://thebs.org
------------------------------------------------------------------
There is no greater ignorance than the popular American environ-
mental movement, which focuses on the most useless details.  Be it
recycling the world's most renewable resource or refusal to use
proven CFC insulation on launch vehicles, no lives will be spared
in the further pursuit of, ironically, harming the environment.



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