On Friday 03 June 2005 23:22, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-06-03 at 21:26, Lamar Owen wrote:
> > I'd put it this way:
> > Red Hat makes CentOS possible at all by providing Source RPMs (which they
> > are not required to do;
> I was just having a moment of nostalgia for the old days. Do you
> remember the time when Red Hat was building their reputation and
> building a free version of Red Hat Linux took exactly *no* extra work
> by another team that might instead be adding value by packaging new
> programs in their repository?
Yes I do. I remember the first time Red Hat 4 was a new Linux version. Times
have changed, and the Fedora Project holds the position once held by the
'regular' Red Hat Linux, other than the 'boxed set' angle. Red Hat being
able to stay in business to help support Open Source Software (which they do,
in spades) is a good enough reason for me for the current situation. They
genuinely thought that this was the only way; people who are in the know have
stated that there are still warehouses full of boxed sets of Red Hat Linux
5.x, 6.x, and 7.x. With RHEL they sell fewer boxes, but sell more product,
driving the cost down and making it possible for them to employ some of the
best open source hackers around, like Ulrich Drepper, Alan Cox, Jacob
Jelinek, Tom Lane, and many others. Maybe these fine folk would find
employment elsewhere, and maybe they wouldn't; fact is Red Hat pays them to
work on Open Source, and we benefit from their upstream work, funded in part
by Red Hat.
Yes, Fedora changes too quickly. That's why I'm here with CentOS instead.
Tried WhiteBox; kindof an odd situation there; haven't followed it from
version 4, but had some problems with version 3. Why don't I use RHEL? Too
expensive for my operation here at PARI. If CentOS weren't around I'd be
doing a from source rebuild for myself.
One size does not fit all.
--
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC 28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu
