[TriLUG] Red Hat 9.0 ?!?!

[Brent Verner]

[2003-03-22 10:47] Ken Wahl said:
| On Fri, Mar 21, 2003 at 05:46:11PM -0500, Brent Verner wrote:
| > 
| > This is probably less of a joke than you realise.  With Redhat's
| > recent (and smart!) business direction, I predict they will only 
| > be releasing .0 and .1 versions as $free "Redhat Linux," and the 
| > fully debugged, stable version will be sold as "Redhat Enterprise 
| > Linux".
| > 
| 
| And this is a good thing?  It sounds to me that Red Hat is planning on
| giving their home/personal/enthusiast users the shaft - allowing them
| only to use buggy beta/.0/.1 versions unless there willing to cough up
| hundreds of $$ for the enterprise version.  Sounds similar to another
| software colossus that drove me to linux in the first place.

I think it will be a good thing.  The cost of their Enterprise
systems _is_ very reasonable considering the compatibility
and stability the platform offers -- at $400/yr, I'd only have
to save one day of sysadmin time to justify the cost.  Redhat
is addressing the "linux is only $free if your time is worthless"
with their Enterprise systems.

Redhat and the unnamed colossus have little more in common than
the fact that they are both public companies.  I believe Redhat's
approach to making money is an appropriate balance for a company
that continues to advance the state of Free software.

The only pain I'm feeling is where I have stable production 
systems running on 7.2 and 7.3.  These systems probably have
another two years of life, and I'm not looking forward to
the EOL of these platforms.  I'd _love_ to be able to count on
Redhat to provide security updates for the next two or three
years for these systems, and would heartily recommend to my
clients that they pay Redhat $400/yr for the updates.

As far as the home/personal/enthusiast use is concerned, I don't
think annual upgrades will be as much of a burden as it is on
production servers.  I personally use debian unstable on my
workstations so I have access to more bleeding-edge software.
While I do care for a stable workstation, I am more willing
to deal with a few glitches to have newer software.

  b

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