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

[Paul Ingendorf]

Maybe you can answer some question since you seem to know so much.

How many developers does redhat employ?
How many lawyers does redhat employ?
How many people are employed through redhat?
How many projects does redhat support with more than 10k a year?
How much money did redhat make last year.
How much was spent on advertising their services?
How much money was spent on developing new business ventures?

I think your allowing your personal agenda to alter your view regardless of
the facts.  I'm all for capitalism but I think if your going to build your
business on the back of a community you really need to step to the plate and
do things right by all parties.  If they did something special for you,
yippee.  You still think everyone else should be paying for updates when
many distros are still providing them for free?  I don't so when I look at
them right now and the way they have practiced this whole up2date thing I do
not see things through the same rose colored glasses you do.  In addition I
said in my earlier e-mail I don't condemn them just yet but I do understand
were people are coming from who do.  You have indirectly explained why you
refuse to see things that way and that's fine.  It does not mean I'm wrong
only that you have an agenda of keeping redhats name out of the mud so your
investment was not in vain.  Contracts and meeting don't cost as much as a
magazine ad and you will only convince idiots and fools it does.

For the record I don't use redhat anymore I quit when they started jacking
with the registration for updates.  Now I use Mandrake and I'm happy with
their current policies.

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at ntlug.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at ntlug.org]On
Behalf Of Justin M. Forbes
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 9:33 AM
To: NTLUG Discussion List
Subject: Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] @#$%^&*! redhat up2date!!!!!

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


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