Followup Interview with Jeremy Hogan of Red Hat
 

With all of the recent Fedora and RHEL news, I thought another interview with Jeremy Hogan was in order. He was kind enough to agree to get badgered again. Thanks Jeremy.

--jeremy

###

LQ) Now that the dust from the RHL EOL/Fedora announcement has settled a bit, what are your thoughts on how it played out?

JH) As well as it could have in many respects. We had an awful lot of users putting Red Hat Linux (across many versions) all over the place. But it was all still Red Hat Linux by name to them, so to see that name go, is to see the whole thing go. And on came the "Red Hat throws out baby, keeps bathwater" headlines.

LQ) Did it go as planned?

JH) There was a lot we couldn't plan for, but mostly.

LQ) Do you feel that in the long run the lack of a freely downloadable RHL will hurt the "Red Hat brand"?

JH) No, I think Fedora will develop it's own distinct brand attributes, and people will gravitate, or opt-in to the solution that suits them.

Again, with RHL you had both worlds under one name, so now it's easy to tell in a lot of respects what you should use if you want a freely downloadable (and I'd add installable, ISO'd etc) since Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available for download as well.

We still have gaps to fill in the small business/home office end, but developers can have Fedora, or get RHEL for free in an upcoming program. The new education program has some great pricing, we have a great pricing incentive on ES/WS right now for those c/o price, so you see the initial complaints being addressed. In the end, I think it will
strengthen the brand.

LQ) How has the announcement affected Red Hat internally?

JH) Our culture mirrors the community reaction. It ran the gamut, as you'd expect. I think folks internally thought very long and hard about how this was going to work out. This is part of a bigger plan to really promote our strengths and the strengths of open source technology while identifying and addressing the gaps.

LQ) What is the consensus from the average Red Hat employee?

JH) Well, we've known about it internally for some time, so it's down to execution for us.

LQ) Was the backlash from the Linux community a bit stronger than was anticipated?

JH) Yes and no, I think people got too alarmed by Matthew Szulik's interview. I think it was mis-interpreted starting with the article's headline and on it went.

I'm surprised that some of the people who missed the "free as in free *and* free" RHL ISOs on ftp, did not opt for Fedora.

And I think I'm always surprised at the skepticism toward Red Hat. To me Linux advocates bashing Linux advocates does Microsoft's work for them. It plays into the FUD that we are an angry mob.

LQ) What misconception(s) do you see most often?

JH) That's it's only about money for us. It's really an overt effort on our part to keep things in balance, you donate a million dollars to defend the GPL on one hand, you develop your markets on the other.

LQ) Reading between the lines a bit, a recent comment from Mr. Szulik seemed to indicate that he felt consumer desktop Linux was sufficiently immature that Red Hat doesn't want to offer it, but when it does mature enough Red Hat will get into that market. Any comments?

JH) The consumer desktop is a pretty big market, and we already have a chunk of it, but it's fickle, it's full of folks happy enough, or used to what they have. It's full of people using technology because they have to, or using an OS because it came installed. A number of things have to be right to really get into that, technological superiority, as we've seen is not enough or else OSX would have the desktop. (I've decided to make it a tradition of plugging OSX in these interviews.)

Windows isn't even as seamless as some folks make it out to be as far as hardware and tech support, it's just well past critical mass in adoption.

As we develop ISV/IHV support, OEM pre-loads, k-12 and university adoption, drive toward web services, and just plain continually improving the total OS experience those things fall into place.

You'll know when we think it's ready.

LQ) Red Hat had become, at least in the US, the de facto Linux distro (ie. for many people Linux meant Red Hat). This large install base helped ensure that almost any Linux application was available in RPM format. Do you think this trend will continue with Fedora?

JH) Yes, it makes it even more transparent as to how we develop, it is very encouraging for supplementary projects to be able to develop (e.g. Fedora Legacy) and for folks to re-distribute it, and base products on it. We've also shown with Fedora our ability to deal with apt and yum, third party projects, etc.

LQ) On a similar note do you feel that the much lower number of RHEL (when compared to RHL) installs will affect Q/A?

JH) RHEL is based on RHL and in the future will draw from Fedora.

Fedora was probably the most widely tested release we've done. So I don't think any QA we got externally due to mass install of RHL was diminished. In fact it should grow.

LQ) It has been said that the retail RHL product was in fact profitable. Demand for the product is high enough that companies such as Progeny will continue supporting it after EOL. Can you share with us some of the factors that went into the decision to EOL?

JH) The EOL was due to the split, if we didn't EOL, we'd have three distros. I think companies sized right to support their focus can find a market. For us to continue RHL support would either mean not delivering on our enterprise line or our commitment to Fedora. Or both.

LQ) Looking at the updated Fedora leadership draft, it seems like Fedora took a step closer to being what RHL used to be. Do you feel that is a fair statement? Any comment?

JH) We are working very hard at an objective criteria for selection of community leaders. We want to make sure we have as broad a range of competencies and viewpoints represented as we can. Inside we have such roles either defined or by behavior, and it made sense to keep that for the initial launch. So it may look like RHL from the leadership stand point now, but it will look like Fedora.

LQ) How has the new RHPW product been received?

JH) I don't know how well it sold since the numbers for the quarter aren't out. We might have done better with a server suite, but who knows.

LQ) Are there any plans to make the RHN entitlement (for RHPW) renewable?

JH) We've gotten a lot of feedback about it, I don't know what the final word is yet. I would guess we'll incent RHPW folks to convert to WS at the end of the first year.

LQ) The Educational pricing that was recently announced for RHEL was, in my opinion, a very good move. Companies like Microsoft and Sun also offer site licenses to the largest clients. Is this something Red Hat is considering? Are any other licensing options being considered?

JH) If you look at the pricing you can have unlimited connects for personal hardware running WS, or priced what they call FTEs (which is how site licensing for MS is set), or per unit.

Pretty much any way you can get it from any other vendor. We're going all the way with .edu so we'll consult with each school to see which model fits them best.

LQ) Would Red Hat ever consider a free, but 100% unsupported, version of RHEL to get the usage base back or is Fedora all you see in the foreseeable future?

JH) You mean like ISOs I take it? We have a developer program announcing soon that will provide it for free for development purposes. We have a demo/eval coming for the user/admin side.

LQ) What are your thoughts on the recent acquisition of Suse by Novell?

JH) It's a great validation of Linux, it's an interesting move for Novell. You can see where they're heading with it, it's execution time now.

LQ) With the recent compromises of both Debian, Gentoo and Savannah is there any concern inside Red Hat that you may also be targeted?

JH) We are above all that. We rule, we are invincible.

Ahem. Sorry.

Security is a state of mind, we assume at all times we are a target.

LQ) Have you taken any additional precautions?

JH) Since then? Not process-wise that I know of, since we weren't compromised. We patched anything needing patching, lickety split, that's for sure.

I think the incident is a fine example of how the Linux and security community work to resolve these things when they do happen. Maybe Ballmer can get some more recent data about Linux security, if nothing else.

LQ) What are your thoughts on UserLinux?

JH) It's a great boost for Debian efforts (meaning the part of the announcement regarding funding). I'm not sure what some of the statements about "proprietary open source" were about, but you say what makes the trades, I guess. I'm still not sure if it's an effort to get funding being Debian-based distros, or a reaction to things Red Hat is doing, or what.

We'll see. Maybe they'll join UnitedLinux and really stick it to us. :-D

LQ) Do you think it poses a legitimate threat to RHEL?

JH) Not really. Not yet, anyway. I tend to look outside the community for the enemy and we've got bigger, imminent threats right now. So do they, for that matter and everyone else too busy kicking our shins to notice.

LQ) What is your response to Bruce Perens' comment that Linux distribution does not work well as a profit center?

JH) I think he means that it's tough to differentiate in that space. Past models showed that selling the instance of the bits was the only way to get paid. You can't do that with the GPL, so you work to become the low cost, efficiency experts.

We're certainly hearing from folks wanting boxed sets with books and CDs, and our retail line is profitable (despite support entitlements coming off out of boxed product pricing) but it scales it self out fast, unless it's all you do or just one of many.

For us, we know that the service, support, and the solution stack is where it's heading on the revenue side. People want solutions.

I was favorably impressed enough with the reasoning behind the creation of Fedora to switch to Fedora after using SuSE for over three years.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

This sucks and Fedora crashes on install
 

Well, I can't get Fedora to install on machines that I have RH9.0 on because the installer keeps crashing. This has me looking elsewhere.

I just installed (couple of months ago) 6 servers running RH9.0 in a small business with the intention of signing up for RHN after we proved it worked, but what do I do now? Given the pricing of the new RH enterprise server, we would have been better off to have purchased the servers with Win 2003 Server installed.

I'm glad to hear they will be offering some sort of free development version, since as a developer I wasn't going to shell out the bucks to test on RH anything much less even make RPM's probably. I wonder if we won't see the number of RPM's available drop.

Most of the desktop users I've talked with are switching from RH9 to SuSe rather than to Fedora. The feeling is that without RH directly behind the distro, it's not going to be stable.

Fedora support
 

>The feeling is that without RH directly behind the distro, it's not going to be stable.

I've seen this complaint, but people have to realize that without Fedora Core, there is no RHEL future. We have to have a proving ground, and a development process. Walkign away from Fedora is walking away from everything.

We committed to assigning engineers to Fedora Core and opened the door for Fedora Extras and Alternates, to be sure we could commit for good.

orphaned
 

Plenty of us home business / casual lusrs - who payed for RH_6/7/8/9 and rhn - had already turned their distro to a single_purpose . Say tax+business expense databasing thru MySQL ... or geoanalytics with GRASSx.. We had/have NO interest in the "enterprise" and none-whatsoever in the byteboyz *nix bleeding edge.
Call us risk_adverse. We would have been happy to pay $60/year forever to RedHat for the service of maintaining a secure & modestly current Linux install.

We got orphaned ... say 50,000 x $60/year ... you would figure that $$$ was insentive for RedHat to chat with us. HAhahaha. Not no --- but hellno.

Re: Fedora support
 

Walking away from a free red hat linux with an updated, supported stable branch, is walking away from the users who like linux both Free and free. Lots of people committed to a Linux distribution which cost them no money. They gave their time, their effort, their bug reports, and their mass to red hat linux. The perception is that fedora is not going to be stable. Since people are having trouble with it already, it would seem to be justified.

One hand washes the other.

I was planning to use RedHat Linux 9 for my home network's webserver. After hearing about RedHat's plan I wasn't too worried about using it still, since I tend to not use RedHat's own services -- I'm picky about how I have things setup. But after many linux friends started 'freaking' perhaps over RedHat's move I decided against it. RedHat was my first distro I ever used.. I felt somewhat betrayed aswell.. I even took a picture of RH at staples, amazed to see the workstation is selling at $90.

Edit: This isn't flaming RedHat or anything. I totally support their move for profitting and such, it only pushes linux into more use since corps like all this support thats being offered, but i dunno.. "think about the little ppl!" :P

>Lots of people committed to a Linux distribution which cost them no money gave their time, their effort, their bug reports, and their mass to red hat linux.

We have a Linux distribution which costs them no money, and if they are willing to trade some of their own work to keep it working, then Fedora still fits. If you mean folks wanting to run a free production ready OS, it's as production ready as RHL 10 would have been at the bit level.

We anticipate releasing errata for each release for a period of time. Folks not wanting to upgrade when we shift, but among this "meet halfway" crowd can still deal with that. So now it's not Red Hat and users in a tit for tat, there is a greater way for 3rd party, extra and alternative packages, and supplementary projects to help. Efforts like Fedora Legacy for example. There are forum communities like this and the fedora lists to augment support.

IMO, Fedora is as stable as you help make it. If you want Red Hat to make it stable, you go with the lifecycle of Fedora Core, and move when it moves, or you go with the enterprise offering, which admitedly does not yet address the range of SOHO/SMB needs.

There's still a gap of folks wanting things like $60 year errata, or lower pricing on WS/ES and we'll have something in that space. But we have to find the right balance.

A small addition to the interview for two frequently asked questions:

LQ) What does RH think of the repackaged RHEL distros (whiteboxlinux and cAos2 EL come to mind).

JH) It's a perfect example of the power of the GPL. They can do whatever they want. We sell RHEL with a stack of support and services, so it's not competition in the usual sense.

LQ) In the interview you made a mention that there would have been three distro's (ie RHL, RHEL and Fedora). Most people are under the impression that Fedora replaced RHL. What was the reasoning behind supporting Fedora when you had RHL and what made you decide to choose keeping Fedora over RHL?

JH) Recall that the first name of Fedora was the "Red Hat Linux Project", so it's roots were still deep in RHL. Which was okay with us, but merging with Fedora Linux and changing the name helped differentiate things further, and brought with it a nice system for integrating 3rd party contributions.

So we planned to split into community and commercial all along, the naming and such are an evolution of how that worked out. In our view RHL didn't just become Fedora, RHL split into RHEL and Fedora.

--jeremy

Is something already in the works for this, or is it just a space you realized needs to be filled? This is one of the last remaining peices to the puzzle IMHO.

--jeremy

A couple months ago, I purchased Pink Tie 9 Linux from CheapBytes.com. It was easier on my budget, since I have a very limited income. I was very impressed with the ease of installation and now it's the only OS on my computer (my eMachines eTower came with Windows 98, which I later upgraded to Win98SE). I was frustrated with all the "security patches" and stuff I'd need to download every time I had to reinstall Windows (which was quite often) and they didn't have patches you could download and save, you had to re-download them, the only way to get them. Then the constant scan for viruses, spyware, downloading updates for each, etc. I gave up.

I've used various versions of Slackware and Red Hat for a few years now, but not much - just trying it here and there for a little while but nothing would (up to now) support all the hardware I used or had all the functionality I needed. Pink Tie (Red Hat) 9 has everything I need and works wonderfully.

Coming from the MS world, where you buy Windows, and you really don't get any (intelligent or easy to access) tech support from MS themselves, I am very used to getting help/answers from sources other than the manufacturer. So I never even gave it a thought about RH dropping support for their Linux distro and going enterprise, etc. It doesn't affect me, even though I'm a home-desktop user. The reason why is because once you get a basic Linux installed, you can always just go download some kernel sources and recompile the kernel to fix any problems, or get other software (mostly in source code form). ./configure, make, make install is so easy to remember. I don't even think twice. I've compiled/customized kernels in Slackware 8 and I think RH 5 so I didn't really have any qeezies about that idea either.

Pink Tie came with Gimp 1.2, but I opted to download and use 1.3.23 (unstable development version) and help debug it (I've already submitted a few things to bugzilla and got good responses), I also am awaiting KDE 3.2. So really, I look for my updates from the writers of each software package, not run to RH for an RPM when something comes up. Being on dialup and no need to run any servers, some stuff doesn't even apply to me anyway.

I'm happy with my Distro. I can maintain it myself easy enough and if I have questions/problems, I know of places to get help. Same methods I had to use with Windows, since there's no "real" support for it - not really.

However, being that Linux was supposedly a free OS put together by developers who volunteer their time and code, I always felt that anyone *selling* Linux for a profit is in a way kinda defying the whole idea behind Linux to begin with. In fact, I go by the old hacker's idiom: "Information SHOULD be free!" However, I do like to support companies that do create things I use and are NICE to me. Jasc software is one - I've helped them beta test Paint Shop Pro since version 5 (been using it since ver. 4.x and now have v. 8.1 running in LINUX under Wine - yes, it works! See FranksCorner.org for my article on that!) CheapBytes are a good company so I don't mind paying for some CDs (saves me time and possible corrupted files via Dialup anyway). As for Red Hat, if they had something I was very intersted in and that I could afford, I'd buy. But I'm careful with my limited funds, so right now RH's offerings are out of my reach.

I also like to have my OS as stable as possible. I do like to do a bit of coding now and then but I don't have the time/energy to really run a development system, since I don't have $$ for another machine and the one I do have has to also take care of my normal home-computing needs as well. So a stable OS is a necessity. I make backups, yes, as I do blitz things from my experimenting as it is. Another reason I'd rather have a stable OS! So I know it's me and not the OS! :D

As for RH's Fedora project, I would buy it from CheapBytes and try it, but I don't have the time/energy for that. So I'm staying with PT9 (RH9) for now. My projects right now are getting Paint Shop Pro 8.1 running fully and reliably in WINE (and helping with the WINE project if I am able) and helping with debugging with the GIMP project. That's enough for me. :)

I wish Red Hat the best of luck with Fedora, though, and I'll be watching. I guess the "wait and see" approach might be the best thing to do right now, rather than knee-jerk reactions (which seem to kick innocent bystanders in the shin ;) )

Re: orphaned
 

Well, then wouldn't it be more sensible to run a distro that actually ships packages of grass (and many related packages such as up-to-date gdal, mapserver etc etc) instead?

Like Mandrake, for which (depending on which release you run) you can also get cvs builds of grass51/57.

Old RedHat 6.2/7.0
 

And what about older versions of RedHat, such as RedHat 6.2 and 7.0.
I know a number of people are still using these products.
Is there any way to get support for these versions from RedHat?
The major problem with support of older RedHat versions is kernel and glibc.
Regular packages can be copied from Fedora without much difficulitiy.

Peter, Webmaster of Freelance BBS: Freelance and Outsourcing Marketplace

rhl to rhel migration
 

Mr Hogan,

in all of this migration, one minor detail got left out. The actual migration details to get a rhl box to rhel.....

see the problem i'm in, and perhaps i'm not alone in this issue, is i have a few boxes running my infrastructure services on some slightly older redhat build (7.3 and 8.0). two weeks ago i burnt my rhel 3 disks and went to upgrade on of my 7.3 servers. during the process it dawned on me that it was not the upgrade process but a clean build process. This put the brakes on things *VERY* quickly. and now i'm left in a position,

my question being, what resources are available to make this transition easier than just the webcast on Tuesday?

Wrt the upgrade path of older RHL releases (7.x and up), Google for FCL (Fedora Core Legacy). If you like that, please support them actively (I mean by doing stuff, not by only leeching rpm's).

Just a short comment on Fedora - I'm a home oofice user who has used RedHat since about version 3.1, and several versions of SuSE, and played with others.
I tried RH9 and liked it but read the reviews that said SuSE was better so I paid for that.
SuSE 9 wouldn't recognize the same hardware that version 7.1,7.2,7.3 did - that's going backwards for me.
So I went Fedora. The only thing I have tried that doesn't work is adding a new program to the menu - it errors.
Otherwise, it recognizes all of my hardware, runs gvim nicely and I'll let you know as soon as I get the Oracle tools installed.
Overall, I would say *nice job* - but I would opt for a situation with a support contract....

Above all that?
 

and then

Wow.. Sure you didn't just "bash" the other distributions by any means right there, but being someone involved very closely with the Gentoo situation that was brought up, this hurts.

You "are above all that" because thanks to the Debian and Savannah compromises, you now have a kernel notice and update that protects you from local users, or any local user accounts that become compromised themselseves.

You "are above all that" because thanks to the Gentoo mirror compromise, you now have an rsync advisory and update that will keep all of your mirrors (including rhm1 and rhm2) secure from outside attacks.

I hope that you enjoy your time above the rest of us.

Um. That were a joke. ;) You might say it was insensitive, but I don't at all think he was making light of the situation and other distros - I think that was more aimed at how RH *isn't* above all that. More poking fun at RH than Gentoo or Debian.

I'm all for RH going down in flames, but I'm just trying to be fair at the same time.

What I think is more objectionable is the initial quote all by itself. RH is perhaps trying to achieve a detente with Microsoft. They are aggressively attacking Unix in a dynamic sense and they are trashing *all* Linux distros with the 'not ready for the desktop, use Windows' crap. And then they turn around and say, 'Oh, don't criticize us - that's just anti-Linux'. The hell it is. It's anti-MicroHat. Because MicroHat *sells* Linux, but it isn't Linux to me anymore, if it ever was. The reason RH is compared to MS is not because people are groping around for an adjective for 'success' (RH wishes that was the reason) but because RH adopts MS-like *tactics* and styles, whether successful or not - RH is *more expensive* than Windows, does funky stuff with busted compilers, patched kernels, the RPM 'standard' - make our own procedure and call it 'standard' - and on and on and on. And now this 'renting' of an OS - and apparently RH users had to 'register' for updates? And so on.

And if RH thinks they can achieve a detente with MS or lull MS to sleep and attack when they aren't looking - well, all the market-seizure from Unix and promoting Windows on the desktop in the world isn't going to stop Microsoft from trying to destroy them. Unless it's Microsoft directing the detente. (Note, I'm not putting on my tinfoil hat and saying that's the case - just that that would *have* to be the case if MS and RH could peacably co-exist.)

That's the problem I have - not with the joke, which I thought was pretty funny, if taken in the right spirit. And ignoring that it's indicative of a sub-conscious attitude - one of these days, they do hope to above all things. They - RH - not, they - manifestations of Linux and open source.

unfortunatly Fedora is not an option for me at the office. I have RHL runnig anumber of my core infrastucture (DHCP,DNS, Network monitoring and managment, etc) so i want/need commerial support.

my gripe is that Redhat hasnt provided a clear migration details on the rubber to road part of movign a RHL to RHEL sever.

Necrogram,

There's a whitepaper that covers the things you need to know to migrate.

https://www.redhat.com/solutions/migration/rhl/

It's also excerpted at:

https://www.redhat.com/advice/tips/

no Mandrake advantage
 

RE: bgmilnes comment:....

...."Well, then wouldn't it be more sensible to run a distro that actually ships packages of grass (and many related packages such as up-to-date gdal, mapserver etc etc) instead? ..."


No advantage is gained! Turns out that major apps like MySQL & GRASSx are pretty easy for the casual lusr to install & maintain under RedHat. Those serious apps seem have PROCEEDURAL(?) rather than systematic motifs ... if that's the proper way to say it.

So the crucial point becomes stability of the underlying OS. What do I trust my IRS data to ?! A+ there to RedHat. My impression is that at Mandrake the "... monkeys run the zoo..." with clubs, magic handshakes and decoder rings. gawd ... -- analogous to the ' ... Respect Thou (our) Flinty Meanderings...' motif of the Debiolian & Slackmolian crowd.

All aspects considered, my RedHat box had become quite a success narrowband "appliance" ... Redhat pulled-the-powercord.

.....taken right from Redhat's site

the Fedora Project is for developers and high-tech enthusiasts using Linux in non-critical computing environments.


:D Um....my home PC that I do everything on is definately not "non-critical". Which is why I will continue to use Slackware 9.1 :D

On another note:

-jeremy,

Thanks for the interview. Good Stuff ;)

Getting the order right
 

And you don't see the problem here? Red Hat took the decision to EOL their base distribution around a year ago and still doesn't have an answer to give a large percentage of their userbase as to where/if they have a place in the RedHat worldview. By they time you get around to figuring out whether you want us around, don't expect too many to still be hanging around in the Red Hat camp. Many have already moved, pressed by the impending drop dead dates you guys have been swinging as a club to force the Enterprise customers to go ahead and buy RHEL, but since you weren't offering ANYTHING for us small fry we have had to DO something.

Me, I rolled my own based on the SRPMS to RHEL, told a few folks and am now up to my butt in coping with the flood of interest from others you have orphaned. We aren't generally mad at RH, but we are confused.

Yes the Enterprise customers will give you serious coin for RHEL and that is great. More power to ya. But there are also a lot of people who just want to drop in a small server and forget it, we aren't running Oracle, we don't need 24/7/365 support, we just need a stable distribution with a long enough errata window that we won't have to always be twiddling the machine. We will pay, not those Enterprise figures, but we also don't need the sort of labor intensive support the Enterprise customers expect. Give em RHN as it exists now for 7.3 and a lot of folks would be happy.

Re: Fedora support
 

It would seem to me that the Code base/functionality for RHEL and Fedora will fork. This concerns me.

I switched to slackware on my workstations. Problem solved. Used Red Hat for 6 years. The handful of RH servers I have at work I might migrate to RHEL to get the support next year.

Since this thread is apparently still live and being looked at by Jeremy, I'll put in my two cents worth.

Especially now that I understand better what the rules are, I really only have two complaints about the new scheme:

1) The lack of flexibility. Most especially, I miss the option of "don't pay anything for it, don't get anything for it."

A few months ago, I had to build two RH9 servers on an emergency basis, because our mail gateway got hacked. It had been on a pair of Sun "network appliance"-style boxes, but the group that had put that in wasn't doing any kind of maintenance to them, or having anybody else do it either. I'm a Unix adminstrator, but we're primarily an AIX shop -- I'm not expert with Solaris. Add to that the fact that there was no CD or any other obvious way to reinstall those boxes, and we were in trouble.

I built a couple of RH9 boxes to do the job, the first one being up a little over an hour after we found the problem.

Under the current licensing scheme, I have absolutely no way to do that. I have to place my order, wait 7 to 10 (business) days, and then, and only then can I fix my problem.

In this case, in addition to being our external mail servers, these machines were our external DNS servers. Not being able to do mail for two weeks would have had a huge impact on our business. Not having a web site for two weeks might have put us in bankruptcy.

If I could install RHEL on any box I needed it (legally), and then get the support later (or if I could even order the damn thing in a reasonable timeframe) I'd be okay. As it is, I have GOT to find an alternative. Red Hat (in its current incarnation) simply won't work.

2) The current prices are rather on the greedy side. I don't mind $2500 for AS Premium, because on the types of boxes I'm likely to use that, $2500 is not a terribly high price. $350 for a simple (non-public) FTP server, is.

$350 would be a suitable price for an RHN-only AS instance. RHN-only ES ought to be more like $100/yr.



The one thing that concerns me most is that four or five years down the line, this could mean the demise of Red Hat, or at least its relegation to a niche market.

Before the change, Red Hat got a lot of free publicity from being the biggest Linux distributor. After April of next year, that's almost certain not to be true anymore. It may (even "probably will") have the lion's share of the enterprise market, but all the desktop installations (like my two) are going to go away. In the public's eye, that means somebody else (either SUSE or Mandrake, almost certainly) is going to be "the world's biggest Linux distributor". In the case of SUSE, they have an enterprise version, as well as the everyday version, and it's supported by people like Oracle.

I'm fairly certain most companies are like mine -- we're much happier using the same stuff for everything than having to keep track of 15 different versions.

What I'm afraid will happen over the course of the next several years, is that somebody else will take over the everyday "do whatever you want to with it" version of Linux, and provide an enterprise edition also. In order to keep from having to mess with too many versions, many companies like mine will switch to that version for everything, and Red Hat will have left themselves hung out to dry.

The reason I care about that is Red Hat is the only vendor I've seen so far that seems to "get it" when it comes to business. They put out a version, and all of the updates to those packages from that point on are bug fixes. They don't add functionality that I might or might not want, and break stuff I definitely do want to do it.

Most of the other distributions spend a lot more time worshiping at the "We've got the latest and greatest" altar. I usually don't care about the latest and greatest, I care about it being several times MORE solid than a rock.



Last subject:

For anyone who didn't know, Red Hat has not made it impossible to use the code in RHEL without a licence. That's what I thought at first, but the whiteboxlinux people got me straightened out. Look at the EULA on the first binary disc. It will point you to two RPMs that you must change the images in.

Once you've changed those images, so that it's no longer "Red Hat" EL, you can install it anywhere you like, as often as you like. You can never get support (including RHN) on it from Red Hat, though. If you're going to put it out for anybody else to use, make sure it's clear that this is not Red Hat EL. RH isn't going to support one of these (at least in part because they have no idea what ELSE you might have done to it), and they don't want to have their name attached to it unless they know what it is and trust it.

I had originally thought they were trampling all over the GPL, but they're not. They ARE being picky about their name and trademarks, but that's a different animal. They've actually been quite couth about putting all the stuff you have to watch for in a couple of RPMs.

I have implemented several Linux servers into our company over the last six years or so. Having tried multiple distributions over the years I have consistently returned and finally standardized on the Red Hat distribution. I had been testing out the Red Hat Network update service and thought it was a great service and was preparing to subscribe all of our servers to their offering.

Then came the announcement by an old friend and I felt as if the bottom fell out. I have touted the benefits of Linux and recommended many to try Red Hat as an excellent server distribution. At present I can no longer do that. Being short-staffed as many IT departments are these days, it is increasing difficult to keep systems up-to-date, apply security fixes, and to keep all systems communicating in a mixed OS environment.

We don't mind paying Red Hat for the initial enterprise license and paying a reasonable annual maintenance fee. But having to pay for all of the servers installed just to get updates and security fixes is a problem. Our company has never had to use Red Hat for support issues, nor do we anticipate that we would require that on an ongoing basis, so why pay for it? With Red Hat's current pricing structure it appears as if it would be easier for us to just standardize on Windows 2000/2003, much to my chagrin.

That said, I will not willingly return to the whims of MS and their constantly changing licensing agreements and product groupings. What we are left with is the fact that we must once again search and review other Linux distributions. A distribution that does not price us out of their offerings, nor one that pushes us to use an ever changing, non-stable, many-releases-a-year testing version.

Red Hat will harvest and maintain the stable portion of the Fedora release and incorporate those features into their enterprise offering. Unfortunately for us, we are currently pushed out of their future plans due to cost constraints.

Farewell good friend, it was good while it lasted and best of luck to the future, for all of us.

Microsoft's attempt to be on the bleeding edge in the market has produced more bugs and holes in their software which makes it a prefect target for hackers.

I see Fedora going down the same path. Bleeding edge means that your system is more open to the world then one might know or want. As more and more hacker start to hack this code more and more users will leave for a more stable and secure distribution. Lets face it, hacker will adopt Fedora because of it being on the bleeding edge. This means to them that there are bound to be holes that have yet to be found and they might be the first to exploit it.

Bleeding edge is good for some but not all. I would think that 90%+ don't want to be on the bleeding edge. I know I don't want to be on the bleeding edge, I want to be safe and have my data safe. When I started using Red Hat I believed this to be the case, but now being pushed to Fedora I'm not so sure now. The only way I see Fedora to survive is to also have 2 different distributions. One being secure and not on the bleeding edge and one being the bleeding edge. Bleeding edge is for developers not normal users.

Take your time to think about it.
 

Just my two cents...

As Jeremy Hogan stated Red Hat hasn't quit the desktop market, they are working on a viable product scheme for SOHO and SMB users (like me).

IMHO people saying they don't want to spend a lot of money on RHEL for their servers don't take into account that one can successfully run a reliable server on RHEL WS for under $200. Don't use a bomb to kill mosquito.

Of course you can drive a Ferrari to office and back home everyday, but a Toyota would do the job. Not everyone needs the extra muscle.

I think we face a bigger issue with the desktop: under $200 is not so expensive but my concern is about RHN annual fee. Again it is not set yet, and Red Hat says they’re working on that.

Remember: free as in freedom not as in free beer. The truth is that some people doesn’t like to pay for the stuff, I include myself. But consider that there is no reason to use the paid alternative if you can get it for free, unless of course that there is a reason.

IMHO this is the case with people that like free as in free beer. Let me explain myself: if Fedora is not good enough for you, and you think RHEL is too expensive you should be using FreeBSD. It is very reliable, open source, community driven, and free of charge.

Ooh, it’s community driven like Fedora. I don’t see any real advantage because if you let Fedora grow it will become something like Debian or FreeBSD. That’s what Red Hat try to explain and a lot of people don’t seem to get it.

Everything arrives on the right time, not before neither after, just in time. What I’m going to do is to continue using RHL until April 2004, and then I’ll choose RHEL WS, Fedora, or anything else. By then Red Hat should have figured out what to do with users like us, be it to continue supporting RHL or lower RHEL prices, whatever the way they choose I am confident it will be good. By then Fedora should be a lot more stable –by the way I think it’s very stable already- and more appealing to a lot of people.

As a business owner I know there is no such thing as a static business, you either grow or become smaller. I also know that when times change one should change with it. So is Red Hat doing, I don’t see anything wrong here. They differentiate from the rest of the Linux offerings by their particular ability to success in business. Some people are afraid of change, and panic very easily with news involving changes.

I was surprised with the EOL announcement at first, but then I realized it’s the logical thing to do considering what’s happening in the Linux –and non Linux- world. I’d been using Red Hat since version 5.2, I love it, but I could change it for something better for my organization and for me if I have to.

My advice is to plan and prepare for the future it’s very important, a wise man do so, but keep a strong grip in the present and focus on your goals.

___________________________________
Try Knoppix on the road, you’ll feel at home.

Like "dbryson" mentioned, i have a small webhosting company with 4 RH 9.0 servers. I just spent months upgrading from 6.2 and 7.0 to 9.0. Now i hear this whole EOL and "now it's time to pay" thing. I use to brag to all my co-workers/sys admins how great and FREE RH is, while they were stuck with Microsoft products.

So what do i do now?? I can not afford the $345 US(I am a Canadian) per server. WHy would anyone then want to stay ? Microsoft has better support so may as well go with them... just more work on security updates!

I was so proud to say "i pay nothing and have 10 times the flexibilty and security and of course stability". Now, i already have gotten a few emails from them laughing at me, asking if i want a copy of Win2003!

Maybe someone should start a group or club of all RH users in the same situation? I am sure there are many RH users that have under 5 servers that are production and important and can not be replaced or migrated easily.

www.iwantredhatforfreestill.com

:)

Thanks for the vent..
Rob...

"So what do i do now?? I can not afford the $345 US(I am a Canadian) per server."

I used SuSE for 3 years. The first year or so I bought SuSE then I simply switched to using downloadable SuSE (I sometime purchased it from a discount CD seller). I recently switched from SuSE to Fedora Core 1. My opinion on your question is this:

If you are paying for Linux then SuSE is cheaper and better than Red Hat. If you are not paying for Linux then Fedora is better than SuSE.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

I would not mind paying 60 bucks a year if hat option was still available... but not $345.

I guess i will have to check out Fedora.... my main needs are Apache MYSQL, sendmail(with mailscanner),some popper, vsftp, php, SSL.

I will assume these shouls at least work ok on Fedora?

:)

Rob...

"my main needs are Apache MYSQL, sendmail(with mailscanner),some popper, vsftp, php, SSL.

I will assume these shouls at least work ok on Fedora?"

These programs will work on any Linux distribution. The question is how easy are they to install and maintain, which will vary from distribution to distribution.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Progeny offers RHL support for $5 per machine
 

I came across a site which mentioned that Progeny would offer support for RHL users for about $5 per machine per month.

Visit : http://www.progeny.com/products/transition/index.html

Perhaps this will help some of our forum users ?

Thats no bad....

:)

It's a start, thanks for the link! I hope they intend to go past their Dec 31 2004 date though....

I will probabaly sign up for that, but i will also check around too, when ya think of it , there is probably other companies out there intending to do the same, relizing that there is a good oppotunity for the millions of RH 7.2 and up users who will need updates..

Thanks once again...

Rob...

Facts:
1) Oracle does not work on Fedora and works on Rh 9.0 (not supported but great for development!)
2) Rh Es does not include automatically MySql same as Rh 9.0
3) Rh Ws does not support more than two "logical" CPU Rh 9.0 does !
4) You cannot download Es for free. (if you are looking for a stable version without support too bad..)

It's look like
1) Rh want to protect a market of commercial application. As a developer in one side you can download Oracle but in the other side you lost the OS. ???
2) Rh has tried to promote his own database version based on postgres. So if you want to install MySql (I think the most popular free database), you have to force the option. That is the same approach with Es but the "preferred" database seams to be Oracle now.
3) Buying a mother board with two xeon (multi thread) CPU is now "affordable". This give you more power and having some resource left when you compile or backup. The power of a big computer is now available with as small budget but we lost the OS.
4) GPL correct me if I'am wrong but does it means "to make sure the software is free for all its users" I am not sure that is applicable for Rh !

Conclusion
Rh business shows the same business orientation as Windows : get part of big and medium enterprise market.
The free software is not compatible with the actual business approach of software editor (investment, profit on investment) with copyright, but free software is more compatible with direct services revenue but less profitable for software editor.
The free software community force windows to break his prices, free software should act to force Rh to revise his business policy.