[NTLUG:Discuss] Redhat Offerings -- the Red Hat bashing tour is back!

[Kevin Hulse]

--- "Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith at ieee.org> wrote:
> Dave Augustus wrote:  
[deletia]
> BTW, you _can_ still buy a "retail box" of Red Hat. 
> It's called "Red
> Hat Professional Workstation" (RHPW) and retails for
> $109.  It's

Option A:  When a Linux gets critical mass of 
           marketshare, the distributor jacks
           up the price 100% or more.

> basically the repackaged version of RHEL WS, only
> for the retail shelf.
> 
> And now Red Hat has introduced the "Red Hat
> Desktop."  It, again, is
> little more than a repackaged version of RHEL WS,
> only sold in 10 and 50
> license packs at a highly reduced rate.  This was to
> appease open
> licensees, system integrators and those building
> clusters.
> 
> > I just find myself asking lots of new questions
> when building a
> > server: the answer used to be Redhat, now I can't
> say that anymore and
> > I am searching for new answers.  Ideas?
> 
> Yeah, stop listening to the mob and ignorant IT
> media and find out the
> _real_ story about RHEL and FC.  I tire of the
> demonization of Red Hat. 

Option B: When a Linux gets critical mass of 
          marketshare, the distributor 
          discontinues the product.

Neither of these are make Redhat seem particularly
dependable. "Promises" about having a stable 5 year
release cycle don't help. Redhat has earned all the
abuse it has gotten lately. They haven't endeared
themselves to those of us that would otherwise deploy
on IBM or Sun systems.

> Just because Red Hat promotes its commercial
> products doesn't mean it's
> not out funding a crapload of GPL development,
> including Fedora.

They could have done that without effectively
killing the original Redhat trademark.

[deletia]