On 5/28/05, Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith@xxxxxxxx> <thebs413@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> But remember, it's Red Hat's fault. ;->
>
That's unnecessary sarcasm. No one that I know would suggest that
RedHat should ship code that is not properly licensed.
But, sarcasm or not, there's a grain of truth in that statement.
The essential truth underlying all of this angry discussion and others
like it on other lists is this:
It is 100% true that RedHat has abandoned a large portion of their
prior market for business reasons. They still offer a good product for
the money, but they have scaled back their offering to support only
the largest customers who are willing to accept the limitations of the
new offering because of the SLA and because of continued rock solid
(for the most part) releases. This leaves a great many shipwrecked
souls on the coastline who in the past chose to run RedHat for solid
support in a number of areas that have now been abandoned as
unprofitable and/or not easily maintainable. Such ex customers are
understandably bitter, You may consider their complaints to be
ignorance, but many are merely expressing their natural concerns about
being left behind.
It is unquestionably RedHat's fault that this (granted not especially
profitable) portion of their prior customer base has been left high
and dry. RedHat did it, and they would do it again tomorrow. Ignorance
comes into play because those who are complaining have not yet
realized the full extent of their abandonment. The RedHat that they
knew and loved is gone never to return, but they keep wishing it back.
The RedHat of today and tomorrow is a business enterprise with the
bottom line firmly in sight, and only those customers with a lot of
clout will be able to influence the roadmap. Please don't
misinterpret: this is not to say that RedHat does not make a lot of
worthwhile contributions to Linux in general, perhaps more than any
other vendor.
It's just too bad that there is really nothing on offer for these
former customers. Please don't suggest Fedora. The customers who are
complaining the loudest are not interested in experimental versions.
None of this has really very much to do with CentOS. They are doing a
damn good job maintaining a community version of the RedHat enterprise
offering. Unfortunately, some of those abandoned customers appear to
have believed that CentOS, as a community endeavor, might fill the
gap, but that's a misunderstanding (ignorance as you would call it) of
the CentOS mission.
--
Collins
Head teachers of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but
the Start button.
