Re: Thoughts on Fedora

[Jason Dixon <jason dixongroup net>]

On Sat, 2003-10-25 at 16:36, Ed Wilts wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 25, 2003 at 01:11:00PM -0700, Thomas Smith wrote:

> > This is unfortunate. I was absolutely willing to pay for their RHN and 
> > monitoring services--this has incredible value to me. I haven't seen how 
> > or if similar options will be available for Fedora but they've made it 
> > clear that /no commercial support/ is available.
> 
> Commercial support costs money.  Too many people were taking the
> approach of a free download with demo RHN (or alternative update
> sources) for Red Hat to make enough money to continue to do this.

Here, here.  I think most folks will start to appreciate the RHEL
products, as I have, by the length of their maintenance mode.  This is
the period of time for which Red Hat will continue to offer security and
bugfix patches.  As someone who caters to a number of small/mid-sized
businesses looking to maximize their consulting dollars, IT'S ALL ABOUT
THE PATCHES.

I know that by providing a quality service at a reasonable cost, my
customers can continue to come back to me for additional services.  If I
(or my upstream vendor) milk them out of everything up front, it doesn't
make good sense for me OR my customer.  Red Hat, in their infinite
wisdom, have found a support plan that makes sense for them and for
their client base.  Offering free patches ad infinitum doesn't work for
them.  Forcing upgrades every 6 months doesn't work for (real)
businesses.  Offering patches at a fair cost for an extended lifetime
works for everyone.

Perhaps I'm viewing this as someone paranoid about the security and
stability of my systems.  Is there something wrong with that?  ;-)

-- 
Jason Dixon, RHCE
DixonGroup Consulting
http://www.dixongroup.net