Fate of RedHat

[Dave Ihnat]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2004 at 11:33:10PM -0600, John Nichel wrote:
> I find it funny (and sad at the same time) that the same people who just 
> a year ago would have been shouting Red Hat at the top of their lungs 
> had someone mentioned Microsoft, are so willing to 'jump ship' now.  So 
> Red Hat is going to charge now...they're a business!!!

The complaint is not that they're charging, it's that their new model
doesn't give us the options and features WE need to sell RedHat.
This isn't a lovefest or religion; it's a business.  If you don't give
me what I need to sell it, I'll have to leave.

> I saw one email on here where someone complained that if you didn't
> buy a version of WS which came with <insert app here> you couldn't
> download the rpm from Red Hat, and that this wasn't right because RH
> didn't make the software, just packaged it in a nice RPM.

That was me, and you just did a nice <dirty> job of eliding my
explanations and qualifications--especially the ones where I SAID that
charging a *fair* amount for the RPMs _sans_ support would be OK--just
to make your point.

> Guess some people don't realize how nasty compiling from source
> (not source RPM's mind you) can be.

I know EXACTLY how nasty compiling from source can be; I was teaching
Unix internals in 1981.  (Where were you?)  I'm still building from
source; personally, I prefer the Apache Toolbox to separate RPMs.
But that doesn't mean it's OK for me to force that on clients.
-- 
	Dave Ihnat
	ignatz at dminet.com