On Tue, 25 Mar 2003 10:33:35 -0800, you wrote: >Comparing Red Hat to MS is ridiculous. As far as I can tell, Red Hats >latest decisions, for which they've taken so much heat, are all the >result of actually listening to their customers. While I agree some of the decisions Red Hat has made have been necessary and even good (even if Red Hat has screwed up the implementation and public relations aspects of at least some of them) they are also apparently ignoring a lot of their existing and (at least until now) loyal customers. I certainly can't recall messages on any of the Red Hat mailing lists or any survey asking for Red Hat to price their Linux product at the same price levels Microsoft charges, yet that is exactly what Red Hat has done (and in at least 1 case when you extend the price over a 3 or 4 year lifetime of a product Red Hat is actually more expensive than Microsoft). The base Red Hat product line (8.0, 9, whatever next) is no longer suitable for business or the average home user. You cannot expect a company or joe user to upgrade their operating system every year (which is now necessary given the 12 month limit on bug/security fixes). To get a reasonable period of security fixes you have to move up to the enterprise line of products, which starts at a minimum of twice the price and has more restrictive licensing terms. So your average person at home now has a choice of Windows XP at $300 or Red Hat Enterprise Workstation at $300 ($60 a year after the first year for access to security fixes). Guess what, XP comes with full multimedia capabilities including MP3 and DVD, as well as a full range of software available for purchase including games, tax software, etc. Which would you choose? And by the way, so far at least Microsoft still offers free security fixes in the base price. -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
