Fate of RedHat

[Dave Ihnat]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2004 at 12:22:07PM -0500, Thomas E. Dukes wrote:
> I was just wondering if there is a general concensus (sp) of what everyone
> is planning to do when RedHat 9.0 is no longer supported?
> 
> Are most going to the Fedora Project or paying to go to the Enterprise
> Linux?

I can't recommend Fedora for a production site.  I can't even feel
comfortable running Fedora for a personal site if I HAVE to trust it to
keep running. Anecdotal reports aside, it just doesn't have any believable
quality committment from RedHat; it's bleeding-edge experimental, by
their own admission.

The problem I've found is that under the "new" model, the cost vs. risk
differential, for at least small clients, isn't enough to wean them away
from Microsoft.  Larger clients are as bad--unless they've some political
commitment to Linux, they're looking at risks--both the uncertainty of
new software packages + compatibility questions, and the legal risks from
those morons at SCO--that make the choice questionable at the pricing
models RedHat has in place for its Enterprise distros.

Probably the worst killer for RedHat is that you can't download RPMs
from a different platform--that is, if you buy Professional Workstation,
you can't DL RPMs for, say, sendmail, since that wasn't originally part
of the package you bought.  (This confirmed again yesterday from a sales
person at RH).

You didn't pay for it, you may say; neither did RedHat.  They _built_
it, and integrated it--but the cost for just turning it into an RPM
is marginal. Their fees, supposedly, are to cover the installation
and ongoing support costs.  So how about allowing you to install an
RPM that's not provided with the platform you bought, but you don't
get support? Maybe a (much reduced) fee for DL access? But that's not
an option.

This *is* a killer; what's the advantage of buying RedHat if you can't
justify the expense of a particular platform, need some services RH
has arbitrarily decided belong in another platform--but can't use RPMs
and have to build packages not delivered with the platform from source?
You'd just as well go with any other Linux distro; RedHat and RPM aren't
helping you.  This model is ill-conceived, and has effectively means I
can't recommend RedHat to small to mid-sized clients.
-- 
	Dave Ihnat
	ignatz at dminet.com