[NTLUG:Discuss] @#$%^&*! redhat up2date!!!!!

[Justin M. Forbes]

On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 08:51:55AM -0600, Paul Ingendorf wrote:
> I guess simple people need simple explanations.
> 
> RedHat has taken something built by a community and maintained by that
> community.  They have branded it, marketed it, and now are selling updates
> to it.  Its not the updates that are costing them money Victor it is the
> branding and marketing.  This is what I find shady about what they are doing
> now.  Providing tools of little to no value above what is already out there
> and trying to use their position as a respected distro provider to pry
> additional dollars out of the pockets of both your average consumer and
> their power users as well so they can strengthen their market position
> further by spending more dollars or marketing and branding, not unlike what
> Microsoft has done in the past and is why you see the comparison.
> 

Actually, you are just wrong here... What really costs money, is the
massive infrastructure required to put out QAed distributions and updates,
the army of developers they employ so that they can devote themselves full
time to Linux development, and release every bit of those changes upstream.
Finally, and most people dont get this, but I have been dealing with it for
a couple of months now, corporate backing is almost required for new
hardware support.  It takes an act of congress for an individual to get
agreements in place for access to hardware specifications, test platforms,
etc.  I for one do not have the money to have lawyers look over every NDA,
or access agreement, and most of them are prewritten to be signed by
"________ a Corporation based in ____________" .  Well, if you are not a
corp, they just dont know what to do.  It can be worked around, but it
takes alot of effort.  My AMD64 port of Fedora has cost me over 5K in
hardware for testing and the like that I would not have  purchased
otherwise.  And that is still using Red Hat or their partners resources for
a lot of backend infrastructure.  That is also having Red Hat make some
pushes with AMD to give me access to some things they typically would not
give individuals access to, and that doesnt include the hundreds of hours
of work effort put in.   You are right, Linux is developed by the
community, and I put in my time and money gladly.  I can however assure
you that if it were not for companies like Red Hat, Suse, Connectiva, and
the countless other Open Source based companies out there actually being
able to make a profit on this, your Linux distribution would not be
anywhere near what it is today.  They take a profit, but they give much
more back.  As for Red Hat, they dont feel necessary to take a profit from
Joe Home user, only businesses which need the extra services they provide.
The have finally made that clear by getting rid of their profit center with
Red Hat Linux, and made it a cost center (that's right, it still costs them
a good chunk of change to build and maintain)  with Fedora.  On top of
that, the only real benefit to them from Fedora is a hopefully more refined
RHEL product. 

Sincerely,
Justin M. Forbes