Forward looking to FC2 final and SELinux

[Jesse Keating]

On Wednesday 07 April 2004 14:32, Stephen Smoogen wrote:
> It is probably better in the long run.. just be aware that I doubt
> the SuSE low price will stay around. Long term, I think that the
> smaller VARs are going to need to build a consortium and support a
> distro that fits their needs. As you can tell with the time/effort in
> Legacy.. it is an expensive operation to keep going.

Thats what I hoped to see out of Fedora.  Enough VARs standing behind 
it, supporting it w/ things like Legacy, providing frontline support 
for their customers, devoting internal people like myself for helping 
the distribution along.  It certainly makes sense for VARs like mine to 
do Fedora for the free people, as it DOES prove ground for RHEL for 
those that can afford it.

> I think this is where Fedora/Red Hat have not communicated well
> enough. It isnt a product of Red Hat, but everyone assumes it is. Red
> Hat management doesnt seem able to separate itself enough from the
> kid to let it grow by itself.. but doesnt want to take responsibility
> to send it to college :). [Ok I need more sleep.]

This is very much the case.  So much still happens behind the RH wall 
that we don't see, don't hear, don't participate in that it's very much 
a RH product.  We just have to wait for whatever RH decides to lob over 
the wall for public consumption.  The "open" development doesn't seem 
all that "open" in reality.


> Well there is always debian.
>
> To use the fish hook analogy.. you have been using a single prong
> hook. Unless the fish grabs on just right, you loose it. VARs need to
> come up with a way to make a double/triple prong hook. The issue
> comes down to the same way a small retail store has to seperate
> itself from WalMart. It can be done.. its just a lot of work to find
> the customers to keep, and the ones to jettison.

We did have a multi-pron hook.  A) Free OS, B) Rock solid support for 
that free OS.  Phone/email/engineering/consulting, etc..  C) Guarantee 
that the hardware will work w/ said free OS, even going so far as 
developing custom kernel modules to make it happen and providing these 
to the customers to maintain on their own.  We're providing the whole 
package, not just "here's some hardware, oh and we tossed Linux on it.  
Good luck!"

> As a 'potential customer', it has become very hard to figure out why
> to choose a VAR over say IBM/Dell these days because of cost points.
> Most of the VARs who come to sell dont have enough 'Value Add' to
> make it worthwhile. Doing reviews of VAR purchases, most have become
> more of a 'sympathy buy' versus getting something added we couldnt
> get 'wholesale'.

It's the support aspect.  See above's other hooks.  Not everybody 
wants/needs the support, and we don't market to them.  Our price points 
and overhead cannot compete with the folks that go to newegg.com for 
their systems (I'm one of those people).  We do market to the folks 
that can't be bothered with building 40 PCs for their office and 
dealing with the hassle of RMA requests to hardware vendor foo for part 
bar, tracking what part warranty expires when, keeping original 
packaging for every individual part, providing internal IT support for 
the OS, etc...  We take care of all that, and give the end user 2 years 
of full hardware/software support, extendable.  Thats why people choose 
the small vendor over a large vendor, or doing it themselves.

-- 
Jesse Keating RHCE      (geek.j2solutions.net)
Fedora Legacy Team      (www.fedoralegacy.org)
GPG Public Key          (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)
 
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