On Mon, Mar 24, 2003 at 08:35:34PM -0500, Jared Brick wrote: > I disagree, I think there are several valid reasons to be annoyed by Red > Hat's latest move. Most of which have to do with running Red Hat in an > enterprise environment.
In an enterprise environment, Red Hat is targeting Red Hat Enterprise Linux - Advanced Server, Edge Server, and Advanced Workstation. Please go visit http://www.redhat.com/software and see who the target audience is for the "Community Products". > How on Earth does this look in the least bit professional? Was 8.0 the > beta for 9.0? Six months for a major version number? This comes off as a > poor management decision, it makes Red Hat appear unstable. Between > their release of a bunch of "enterprise" distributions, the recent cut > off of rhn and two major releases in six months, Red Hat looks desperate > for sources of income. Big corporations won't base their infrastructure > on a company that doesn't look like it's going to be around next year. Red Hat is merely positioning their products better. The way I see it, 8.x and 9.x are targeted to the "bleeding edge" community - those who want the latest features and don't care if they have to upgrade every year. I see daily postings from people who want the latest version of package x. This is typically in direct competition with those who want long-term stability. You can not be leading edge and stable at the same time. 8.x and 9.x are more likely the beta for Enterprise Linux. Big corporations don't want 8.x or 9.x. They want Enterprise Linux with a longer lifecycle and better support. It's what I'm in the process of buying at my office. Did you see enterprises going to Solaris 9 shortly after it shipped? How about Windows XP - do you see that on every business desktop? Heck, many big organizations are still on NT 4.0 (we're still in the process of migrating to Win2K). I've been managing enterprise servers for about 20 years (yes, I predate the Internet if you can believe it!). I have *no* certifications other than a computing science degree but I know what I'm doing and my systems are stable. The motto on my office door (back when I had a door :-)) said "when downtime is not an option". I've seen big companies big (Wang, Data General, Digital) die and small companies wither away. Many smaller companies have popped up and grown into big companies. I'll be still around when other big companies will also die off (Sun IMHO). I see Red Hat doing some smart things and I'll go on record as saying that Red Hat will outlive Sun (and if you're going to flame me, do it via e-mail, not via this list - I won't respond). > Why would I want to support another distribution? I was only now > starting to place 8.0 in non critical systems, now you expect me to > support 7.X, 8.X, and 9.X. And don't give me the "they have AS for that" > argument, show me the company that will pay for AS for a nameserver and > I'll show you a company going out of business next week. Red Hat can > leverage administrators familiarity with their product to sell the AS > product line for mission critical systems such as Oracle Databases, but > if Red Hat decides to shoot itself in the foot like Caldera did, don't > think I won't switch distributions in a second. Go ahead and switch distributions in a second. I can go to my collection of Linux distributions that I picked up at Linuxworld in NYC in 2000 and trim that down by about 75% to those are still in business. There are probably a hundred or so Linux distributions - those that I'd even consider running my business on are less than a handful and Red Hat is at the top of that list. I can easily justify Edge Server to run my nameservers at work. The effort it takes to plan and upgrade a server easily costs more than it does to put in ES, apply regular security updates, and essentially leave it alone for a few years. Our nameservers are still running 6.2 so you can tell how leading edge we really want to be. Do I want to fight my stability requirements with those that are demanding KDE 3.1 and Gnome 2.2 plus the latest xmms updates? Not bloody likely. Do I care about the bleading edge enhancements to IDE in the 2.5.x kernels? Nope. Do I even care about USB? Nope - USB belongs on the desktop, not in the data center. Do I even care about nVidia drivers? Not at work. I'll pop in ES and let 'em work for a while. > Linux distributions often just don't seem to get it, RH will never be > Microsoft, they won't even be Sun, Red Hat is in a prime position to > take the lion's share of enterprise Linux, and make some decent money in > doing so, I fail to see the point of shenanigans like this. Have you considered the possibility that you may not get it? Red Hat has been in business for 10 years. Most Linux distributors - whom you seem to think probably "got it" - are long gone. Red Hat probably doesn't want to be another Microsoft. They don't need to be to be profitable and remain in business. I could finish last on Forbes list of the richest people in the US and I'd still be a lot wealthier than I am now. -- Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
