fedora-d-rh] Re: plans for long term support releases?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On 1/16/07, Mike A. Harris <mharris at mharris.ca> wrote:
> Thomas M Steenholdt wrote:
>
> > This is why I suggested an more stable (in terms of changes) LTS spin,
> > perhaps, for every 2-4 normal Fedora releases, to provide a Fedora that
> > could actually be used in these situations.
>
> There is already.  It's called "Red Hat Enterprise Linux".  There are
> alternatives as well based upon rebuilding the SRPMS from RHEL.  The
> only difference is that they do not have the "Fedora" brand name tacked
> onto them and they're physically built on computers elsewhere.  To the
> best of my understanding, all the rebuilding work is also done by people
> whom contribute directly or indirectly to the Fedora Project in an
> ongoing basis in some manner.
>
> So, what people are asking for _already_ exists, just under a different
> name.  To duplicate _their_ existing effort would be a waste of
> resources to whoever was doing the work.
>
> But then that's the problem isn't it...  Nobody _wants_ to do the work,
> rather they want _someone_else_ to do the work.  But those someone
> elses that could do the work - are already doing the work, and naming it
> CentOS, or one of the other similar projects out there.
>

Amen brother. I would be happy to do the work, but there are very few
people who would want to pay me enough to cover the US $175.00 per
hour per person to do development, QA, business management, benefits,
electricity, servers etc for the older packages. Those who would pay
for it, will find that it is more cost effective for someone to
support Centos, Red Hat, etc for them.

[Basically, a minimum effort to support 1-2 OS's per year would need
to cover a minimum of 3.5 million dollars in expenses for a small
staff of 10 people. ]

Doing new stuff costs little because people like to add new gizmos.
Going back and fixing other peoples code versus rewriting etc takes a
lot more time, a lot more effort, and a lot more willpower.

-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"