"Rodolfo J. Paiz" wrote: > I think you're very much overreacting. I'm sure they are paying > attention, but I've been following these threads closely. Most of > are speculating what'll happen, but I counted only about 10 people > who were really seriously saying "I don't like it, I'm going away." > Another 10 or 20 were simply saying "Hmm, big change... better > evaluate the competition in case the end result isn't what I expect." > Considering the many thousands of people on this list, that's still > a small fraction. My reading of this whole discussion is that most > people would want a longer EOL for Fedora, but that otherwise it's > wait and see for now. The way Fedora seems to be going will finally address complaints about missing new software or "why does Red Hat still ship version xx while version xy is out for a whole week now". Red Hat is finally trying to approach the average home user, and that's a Good Thing (TM). You know, a lot of the success of Windows in the business world is based on the fact that most employees (up to the management) already had Windows on their home computer, so they decided for the OS they already knew. For better success in the business world Linux needs to have more success in the home computer market. But on the other hand, Fedora isn't really usable for business computers, especially servers. For business use, I need *stable* software and a lifetime of at least 2 years, better three years, without reinstall/complete update. Requirements for other business people may be different, but these are mine. From how I understand the Red Hat announcement, my business requirements will only be met by RHEL, thus the price my company will have to pay will increase dramatically. I won't be able to convince our management to spend so much money - they aren't really fond of Linux because they cannot understand it... Yes, security, stability and so on are nice to have, but the only thing that really impresses the suits is money. I was able to convince them to use Red Hat Linux for our servers only because I could prove that it would save them a lot of money, and because I could tell them that Red Hat is "Industry Standard" for Linux (silly thing, but the suits want that term, so...). From what I understand, RHEL won't be much cheaper that using Windows, so management will decide to use Windows instead. You know, "one OS is cheaper to support than two". *Maybe* I can convince them to use Debian - if my evaluation will show that it's a real replacement for Red Hat (but it won't be "Industry Standard"). Personally, I doubt it. So my company will switch back to Linux, and I may end up unemployed. I'm sure there are lots of business users who can use Red Hat Linux only because it saves their company money. With this advantage going away, many of these companies will decide to drop Red Hat Linux, either for a cheaper but reliable distro or for Windows. My personal opinion is that only very few will stay with the high prices of RHEL - nearly all of them are already buying RHEL. Red Hat is trying to make money, which is absolutely fine for me (I convinced my managers to get RHN subscriptions for each server even though I could just have grabbed the RPMs and write a small script to install it everywhere). My fear is that the way Red Hat is approaching will not generate much additional revenue, and will additionally drive business users away from Red Hat and Linux in general. What I need for my company is something in between of Fedora and RHEL: While I cannot afford RHEL because of the high price, I could live with Fedora if a few things are changed: I need a lifetime of 2 years (maybe I could live with 1.5 years, but that's the absolute minimum, and I would prefer to have 3 years), and I need *stable* software. That means, the Fedora packages would need to be divided into "stable" and "home user" (or whatever you want to call them) packages. This means that sometimes two different versions of the same package need to be available. Of course I'm willing to pay for such a service, but it needs to be well below the RHEL pricing. I understand that things become more expensive over time. The current price of the Update module of 60.00 US-$ per year is nice, but it shouldn't be much more than 100.00 US-$ per year. I only need errata updates and the distinction between really stable packages and the other ones, nothing more, just to keep the servers running. No multimedia, no GUI things, just the bare bones. I can only hope that Red Hat will offer such a system *soon*, or I'm forced to move away. Money rules. :-((( Best regards, Martin Stricker -- Homepage: http://www.martin-stricker.de/ Linux Migration Project: http://www.linux-migration.org/ Red Hat Linux 8.0 for low memory: http://www.rule-project.org/ Registered Linux user #210635: http://counter.li.org/ -- Shrike-list mailing list Shrike-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/shrike-list
