[NTLUG:Discuss] Red Hat 9.0 End of Life 04/30/2004

[Greg Edwards]

Cameron, Thomas wrote:
>>Please don't tell me that a company making a living from OPEN 
>>SOURCE is 
>>going to charge a per box per year fee for it!!!  Did they 
>>move the RH 
>>headquarters to Redmond while I wasn't looking?
> 
> 
> I am constantly amazed at people who say that you shouldn't charge for F/OSS software support.  You have to remember that software development - even just packaging and testing - is very expensive business.  The folks at RH have to get paid, and RH is a commercial entity with responsibilities to its shareholders.
> 
> Red Hat has done more to gain mainstream F/OSS acceptance than any other distro in the US.  They have given away their distros since, what, 1994?  Now people are pitching a fit because RH has the "unmitigated gall" to focus on the most (possibly the only) profitable market segment - the enterprise.
> 
> What these gripers (not you, Greg) won't recognize is that by any standard, a RH desktop machine with support is still only a fraction of the cost of an XP workstation - the same is true of a RHEL server vs. Windows 2003 plus Exchange with MS client access licenses.  Red Hat is still a better deal, a better product, and cheaper.
> 
> RH has committed to supporting Fedora.  I believe that Fedora will probably have a more rapid development cycle than RHL did, and I suspect that security updates will be released as fast or faster than RHL updates were.  Why doesn't eveyone just settle down and see what happens instead of jumping to slam Red Hat?
> 

Where I start getting concerned is that it looks like RH is going down 
the path that UNIX went in the 80's and 90's.  Sell a narrow base 
product at a significant price but don't include the parts that make it 
a whole solution.  From what I read at the RH site the cost of a server 
with development and corporate productivity tools could be some serious 
dollars.  Then add a per station limitation.

I don't begrudge RH for trying to make a profit, but it seems to me that 
they forgot how they got there in the first place.  I think they, and 
the computer industry as a whole, would be better served if they would 
avoid getting greedy on a per unit basis and push for volume to increase 
profits.

-- 
Greg Edwards
New Age Software, Inc. - http://www.nas-inet.com
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