System of Fedora Core

[Michael Schwendt]

Thierry,

On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 18:32:18 +0100, Thierry Sayegh wrote:

> > > For a production environment, bear in mind Fedora is a community 
> > > project....no corporate suport from RedHat!

> Michael Schwendt wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I'd like to understand it correctly, but without further details I
> > don't think I understand what you're trying to say.
> > 
> 
> I am just implying that due to the sheer nature of the Fedora Project, 
> Ed won't be able to avail of any form of corporate support per se.

of course, and therefore you asked him "to be a lot more specific".
He was very brief and vague. And even in his reply, he didn't add any
details.

It's the term "community project" paired with the phrase "no corporate
support from Red Hat" which were too much for my taste.

There are multiple layers of "support". Red Hat develops Fedora Core
and supports it with security/bug fixes after release. The community
can influence the development (well, at least try to), help with
testing, and also contribute in various ways before and after
release. But this is nothing ground-breaking. We're talking "Red Hat
Linux vs. Fedora Core" here, not "Fedora Project vs. Red Hat
Enterprise Linux subscription". The Fedora Project is much more than
Fedora Core and has yet to start in other areas.

> If he wants to use FC in a production environment, the words "good for 
> work" was what triggered this in my <blurry> mind, then he will *only* 
> be able to rely on the community which, mind you, is far from being 
> nothing.

Which is not so accurate either, because bugzilla.redhat.com and the
many hours spent on fixing bugs and developing packages further are
Red Hat's support. And all that on top of developing the core
distribution, which is a production environment itself because, for
instance, the >1600 included packages were built with the same
compilers and tools, which a software developer would use when
choosing Fedora Core as his development environment. That's only one
example of production use, of course. Whether _every single program_
works fully, is another question, and Edward should have elaborated on
what kind of "work" he plans to do with Fedora Core. Even then, it
could be that a feature is broken, because it is used rarely and
nobody noticed, not even the program's very own developers. When that
happens and a broken feature has an impact on the "work" to be done,
differences between subscribing to commercial support channels (of
products like Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and community populated
mailing-lists can be significant.

> I am not telling you FC is not acceptable in a *live* system, just 
> saying that you have to accept the situation. RedHat only offers 
> indirect support through the list/community.

...and thanks to your explanation it becomes clearer what kind of
"support" you refer to all the time.
 
-- 
Fedora Core release 2 (Tettnang) - Linux 2.6.8-1.541
loadavg: 1.16 1.03 1.03