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
They *have* been asked to provide a platform that will have a stable application interface for an extended period of time, and support for longer than 12 months. That was not going to work out with the old release setup. They'd have ended up testing errata for as many as 6 platforms which would have resulted in longer time to errata (ever realize how long the non-Free Software competition takes?), and much higher costs to test and release errata. The new system makes sense from that point of view.
I'm extatic. Consumers and developers will get their hands on new technology faster, and "Enterprise" customers will have a long-term stable platform.
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
Then maybe they won't. These customers probably also aren't going to be running network services, and can afford to worry significantly less about security errata. If their systems "just work" then maybe they don't *need* to upgrade.
Most of the users I know upgrade that often anyway, so I still don't see the problem the same way you do. If the new schedule gets consumers "cool" software sooner, I think that'll make most of them happy.
(which is now necessary given the 12 month limit on bug/security fixes).
It's not a 12 month limit. It's a 12 month guarantee. Read their policy again:
Beginning with the 8.0 release, Red Hat will provide errata maintenance for at least 12 months from the date of initial release.
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.
Microsoft does not, however, provide their product for free. If Red Hat stopped offering FTP downloads, and *everyone* paid for the product, I think that free updates would be far more economically feasible.
I'm happy to have one platform that I can give to my mom, Freely, and purchase for work and development use. If the free download edition disappeared someday, I'd probably use something else. As long as it's there, I don't have cause to bitch.
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