Re: The answers to these "Death of RedHat threads"..

From: Laura Darragh (sexygeek_at_pairowoodies.com)
Date: 11/05/03 

Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 07:09:19 -0500

On Wed, 05 Nov 2003 10:55:36 +0000, Jacob Heider wrote:

 
> Four to six. And they claim they will continue to make security
> enhancements for 6 months after. That's nearly a year between needed
> upgrades.

Jacob, where I come from, six months is half a year. Not 'nearly a year'.

I'm used to two years. Six months and two years is a big difference.

Further, since this is a community supported product, I fully
> expect to see security upgrades back-ported to whatever earlier versions
> of Fedora still command a strong following in the field.

I'd agree with you on that, if I believed the RH "community" was
supportive of Redhat. But thus far, I'm getting bad jives from the
'community' who seem to be looking elsewhere.

It just seems to me that Redhat is sort of tossing out a bone to the
'community' without any meat on that bone. That's a big expectation on
their part, wouldn't you think? Especially when there's a good number of
the community that's pissed right at them right now?

<snip>
>
> Linux is for everybody. I understand that small businesses are going to
> take the largest hit from this,

There are more small businesses than there are large businesses, though,
Jacob. If you had a business model that attracted more small business than
large business.. even then, if a small business disappears, you've not
taken a huge hit. If you focus on large business, and one of them
disappears.. you could be in trouble.

> but I still don't think it will be as bad
> as all the doom-sayers are choosing to make it. Redhat is doing what, in
> large part, their customer base wants.

I don't agree, respectfully. I think they are after different business
now. Their customer base is mostly us small people. Maybe they are
applying the 80/20 rule.. but I think that someone else put it best.. they
can try changing, but that 80/20 rule will still apply... which means they
now have a smaller customer base to make the 80/20 rule apply. It will
still apply.. only on a smaller scale.

They are giving them more control
> over the progress of the distribution, and making it grow faster, and
> incorporate more cutting-edge technology.

Yes. and it will be the small people like me that will be doing the
testing of this cutting edge stuff, and losing or gaining on the customer
base.

I also agree that it looks bad
> now, but I'm betting that because of all of use out here who like Red Hat,
> Fedora is going to very a very stable, very well-maintained and community
> supported operating system.

That's a good bet. Never underestimate the intuition of a woman though.
Your logic may seem right.. but intuitively, it makes no sense, if they
are pissing people off.. the community won't be there.

They are going against the very grain of community. They are using the
word 'community' in one side of their mouth, but in the other side, they
are simply using them. You think the 'community' will stand for this very
long?

They have to give something back to the community more than just test
casing. Otherwise, the community will find other places to commune.

> It's unnecessary to pay for up2date at all. It is trivial to use apt
> (http://ayo.freshrpms.net) and cron to keep your system up-to-date. I
> stopped using the rhn applet as soon as apt-rpm was available, and I
> haven't looked back.

Yes, I realize it is unecessary to pay. You missed my point. I have
CHOSEN, in the past, to pay, as a matter of principle and support. Now,
they want me to pay more.. for what extra benefit?

Well.. for the benefits they are taking away from me.

yes.. I know there are free loaders out there, and want everything for
'free'. And I know that's not the way to do it.. on the other hand, I
think Redhat is giving up a great opportunity to use the grassroots
support it had, in order to continue on with their 80/20 business model.

As mentioned, I, and many others, would have been willing to pay more for
what we got, every year. But thousands more? By asking for thousands
more, they are loosing themselves of thousands, if not millions, of
customers.

Ask 100,000 customers to pay ten bucks more. To each custoemr, it's only
ten bucks. To the vendor though, that's a million more.

They don't seem to have gotten that part of it.

Ask some enterprise customers to pay hundreds more.. and watch as some
do.. but many switch.

> They think they're doing what their customer base wants. Many of us are
> happy to be able to have more control. Many others like me will maintain
> and back-port updates to fedoras that continue to live on in the field.
> I'm extremely skeptical as to "fact" that you'll need to upgrade your
> fedora install more often than you've been upgrading Red Hat Linux.

I think that they are misunderstanding who their customer base is. Their
customer base is only partly the enterprises that are running two hundred
servers.

The majority of their customer base are less than ten servers. But, they
just haven't counted as much.

> Do you think there will be better support for Gentoo? Mandrake or SuSE are
> your best bets if you don't believe community support will cut it. No one
> knows how long SuSE will be cheap, and I've always felt mandrake played it
> too fast and loose with package inclusion in their distro. I will be very
> suprised, and will offer a full apology with whatever public abasement is
> required, if fedora is not as stable, usable, and supported (although not
> be Red Hat) as Red Hat Linux was.

No need to grovel with apologies and public debasements, Jacob :) The
problem is, uncertainty. Over the past years, there's been a certain
expectation, which is now no longer there with Fedora. Who knows if
there will be support in updates, available in a timely manner? It's all
prediction on our part.

I used to be able to go to my clients and make recommendations based on RH
history. There is no Fedora history. So, to answer you question, I have
no idea if Gentoo will provide the same as what I have had in the past. I
also have no idea if RH will.

But when examining the philosophies.. which is all I have, and the recent
events, I'm left to belive that Redhat really isn't all that concerned
about the Fedora users, and so much so, they've even changed the name and
branding of this product.

So here's me, using Fedora, and administering a server for my client. And
something happens because it's bleeding edge stuff, and there are no
updates available as I have not upgraded to the latest version in the
past 8 months.

And along comes some RH vendor and says to my client.. well.. you really
should be using what I have available.. this RH product.. yeah.. Fedora is
ok.. but it ain't RedHat.

So, now I look like an amateur because it's not really Redhat.. it's
Fedora.

And that is just one scenario. There are many many others that I could
think of, but will dispense with right now.

The fact of the matter is, for the past several years, I have not been
promoting Fedora to my clients. I have been promoting Redhat. And I
haven't got a cent from Redhat for doing so. But now they are in a
position to take my good will that I've given them, away from me.

And they're not prepared any longer to offer me any type of useful support
for 1.5 or 2 years.. as I have counted on for giving them my goodwill in
the past.

That's the problem. I feel used by the men in red hats. I've been their
little pawn for the past few years, helping them make a name for
themself, and in return, I get zilch back as far as stability. I've
helped make them stable, and have done my part to help them stay in the
black with their books while promoting their red hattedness.. and I end up
like with no clothes, and feeling mighty chilly here.

And believe me.. I HAVE helped Redhat make a name for themself, having
introduced many many small enterprises to Redhat. And all I get in
return from them is some promise to be a beta tester, with the hope that
the 'community' will still rally around them? That's not a lot of hope to
build my business on, Jacob.

>
> That's ok. It's nearly 6am where I'm sitting, and I didn't just wake
up...

So what have you been doing all night? Tipping your fedora?

Laura

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