Red Hat Linux Support To End 1175
Orbital Sander writes "Received a missive this morning from the Red Hat Network, stating that they will discontinue maintenance on Red Hat Linux 7.x and 8.0 by the end of 2003, and on Red Hat 9.0 by the end of April, 2004. And, more ominously: 'Red Hat does not plan to release another product in the Red Hat Linux line.' [The full text of the email is on Newsforge.] Kind of the end of an era, and the new king has already been appointed: Red Hat Linux is dead! Long live Red Hat Enterprise Linux! Looks like they realized that only their support contract-based version of the product was making them any money." Readers also note that Red Hat is pointing users to the free Fedora Project.
No Red Hat 10? (Score:-1, Insightful)
And yet, loaded on the computer sitting beside me, I have a beta of what I would consider Red Hat 10 (or, at least 9.1). Are they seriously suggesting that those of us that rely on Red Hat's reputation as one of the driving companies behind Linux switch to another company to continue getting a FREE Operating System? Isn't that the point of Linux in the first place?
Just a small setback (Score:2, Insightful)
Crud. (Score:5, Insightful)
I use Red Hat 9 at home. Because of this, when time came to roll out some Linux servers at work and my boss asked me which we should use, I told him "Red Hat Enterprise" (we wanted support and had the money to pay for it).
I suspect that for a reasonably significant portion of their market, Red Hat Linux (and cooresponding useful items like RHN) is the primary reason that their customers buy Enterprise. I hope they've considered this...
The worst thing about this... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Mandrake fills that hole to some extent, but they're largely a repackaged RH, and I can't help wondering whether they'll be able to maintain rpm, cygwin, and all the other widely used RH products on their own. Will RH still be employing Cox?
It *is* possible to make money off free software - look at Hans Reiser [namesys.com], or MySQL [mysql.com]. For that matter, Slashdot and LiveJournal [livejournal.com] use totally open source software, even if the software isn't where they make their money.
Why hasn't RH been able to do the same?
Yet more proof (Score:0, Insightful)
G P L (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm less concerned with the "no new Red Hat" than with "You've got two months to upgrade". Many vendors only support what RH supports, so vendors may no longer support their products on the free system, and that's a big headache for SA's.
They aren't worried (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a shock in the least (Score:4, Insightful)
A free product, free downloads, free support?
Enterprise linux support? Sure, until it's profitable enough that Big Blue decides to take it from 'em.
Big Blue is the only company around poised to profit from Linux. And we all tip our hats and give them our full support. Hip hip hooray.
Does noone see that the open source community is nothing more than a source of free labour to IBM?
They'll milk Red Hat for free code, and when the work is completed to their satisfaction, they will have the might to succeed where SCO fails - "owning" Linux.
Why do people think IBM is a "good" company? Their track record makes MSFT look like a care bear convention.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Allow me to introduce myself. I'm running RedHat 7.1 on the server for my small business, and I even know that I'm not running version "7.1" of Linux. Although I must confess that I can't remember which kernel I last installed...either 2.2.X or 2.4.X. I was considering purchasing one of the 9.X versions of RedHat, but I've been teetering on the fence between that and Mandrake. I'd like to give special thanks to RedHat for helping me to make the decision.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1, Insightful)
That's one huge obstacle that will keep Linux from the desktop: people like this that think that dual-booting and running a mainstream distro are bad things.
Re:Who stands to reason? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Sooner Linux and the GPL dies... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This shouldn't be a surprise by now (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering the number of people who want the updates, I'm almost amazed there isn't a huge group of volunteers to help with the Fedora Legacy project. Or could it be that the people who complain only want to download stuff and not help ?
More seriously, open source has proven itself as a development model for all the programs included in the distribution. Why shouldn't it work for the distribution itself ?
Having volunteers help with the distribution should mean that more effort is going into Fedora than has ever gone into Red Hat Linux (simply because non-Red Hat people are also working on it).
Fedora isn't about abandoning the community. On the contrary, it is about better involving the community in the development of the distribution.
Note: this is my personal opinion (but it should be everyone's
quick comparison here (Score:1, Insightful)
Please don't take this as a troll/flamebait, RedHat is a huge contributor upstream.
Re:Just a small setback (Score:2, Insightful)
F&*% SUPPORT (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The worst thing about this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A sad day (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A serious question (Score:1, Insightful)
Really? You'd better not tell Linux and Alan that - I'm sure they'd be pretty upset to find out that they're not being fed. (Or me - I make my living from Open Source.. and my family isn't starving.)
This is a serious question from one who seeks to be educated.
You seem to be under the impression that the only software that costs money is software that is shrink-wrapped. This is false. In fact, the COTS software market is the smallest segment of the software industry.
If all proprietary software companies were to go out of business tomorrow, it wouldn't mean that every developer on the planet would starve - it would mean that the developers who believe that the COTS software is the only way would begin to starve.
Businesses use software, and require people to make it work. No piece of software does everything that every business (or even a majority of businesses) need - so (logically) those businesses would need developers.
Free software isn't about killing the business side of software - it's about transforming the business from a (false) software-as-product system to a software-as-service system.
Re:Not a shock in the least (Score:4, Insightful)
In the Linux world, where all the basics can be gotten for free, there are only a handful of things you can do to differentiate yourself in the marketplace. The first is to have name recognition, something Red Hat's "freebies" generated very nicely.
Where were you getting your free Red Hat support? I want on this gravy train. Anyhow, this seems too drastic a step. Any money they were losing could have been recouped by simply charging for downloads while allowing for mirroring.
Yeah, they're going to take all of the community's hard work, sell it to their customers, and leave the community with... well, pretty much everything they had before, along with some IBM-generated improvements, a big boost in name recognition, and someone to point to when PHBs start asking, "But where do we get a support contract?"
IBM and Red Hat may have incompatable goals, but I don't see that it means anything for the wider community.
Since IBM is currently working on setting down a legal precedent for the legal enforcability of the GPL, I don't see how they could do that. So long as the code is freely redistributable, anyone with know-how can set up shop as a competitor to IBM's Linux offerings.
Sure, if you're comparing Microsoft (1990-Present) with pre-1990 IBM. Becoming temporarily irrelevant caused a nice little shift in IBM's corporate culture. They're not perfect, but they've improved, and they seem to be dealing fairly with the Linux community.
Re:A sad day (Score:5, Insightful)
The real can of worms (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes I hacked out most of the facts and worked a lot on perception. To many, RedHat -is- Linux. No distinction between Linux9.0 and LinuxEE or whatever, Linux is RedHat and RedHat is Linux in the eyes of those one step behind the rest (like me, with regards to Linux.) This is more than just losing support from RH on the desktop version of Linux 9.0, this could be losing support from your CIO, he could see this as easy justification in going back to mandating (IBM/HP/Microsoft/Whatever.)
I would worry less about the particular version of RH and worry more about the viability of the Linux Movement as a whole based on this recent change in the wind.
Disclaimer : I have one RH 9.0 machine and am still fairly new to the scene (heavy MS user, but open minded and branching out to explore my options.)
What is Red Hat thinking? A marketing mistake! (Score:5, Insightful)
You say "Linux" or "Red Hat" to the electronics store geeks and they finally know what you are talking about these days. You can tell your boss that you want to run "Red Hat Linux" and he'll consider it.
Now you have to go to the electronics store and answer the "What kind of computer do you have?" question with "I use Fedora Core." Will your boss consider letting you use "Fedora Core 1" even if you promise him that it's really "Red Hat Linux 10" in disguise?
Why not "Red Hat Fedora 10?"
Why not "Fedora Linux 10?"
Why instead the relatively obscure "Fedora Core 1?"
And it's a very awkward phrase... Think of the authors of "For Dummies" books who will how have to say "in Fedora Core, XYZ" over and over in their books instead of just "in Linux, XYZ" so as not to confuse the reader!
And will readers that set out to buy books about Linux even figure out that they now want the book about "Fedora Core?"
Similarly, most of the people that I know who have considered toying with Linux know only about Red Hat Linux. When they finally get a free afternoon and try to locate it, will they make the connection and figure out to download Fedora Core 1 over their broadband connection, or will newbies be downloading Red Hat Linux 9 for the next four years because it's the highest numbered Red Hat Linux they can find?
Seems like a dumb marketing move, as far as I'm concerned.
the point of FREE. (Score:3, Insightful)
It looks as if Red Hat is tipping its fedora [redhat.com] to the Debian way. They will, I'm sure, continue to put quality free software out, but they are going to leave it to other people to distribute it. In fact, lots of great Red Hat tools have been finding their way into Debian already and it did not cost Red Hat a dime. Fedora will give you your free beer and keep you in the Red Hat family. Red Hat, it seems, is going to rely on you. Go make it happen.
Re:A sad day (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends on how big the corporation is.
If I had a huge budget, then RedHat is really immature compaired to other Enterprise strength OSs.
If I was a small company and had a small budget, the personnal recommendations do come into play.
>they know that Red Hat Enterprise is as stable and reliable for production servers, and beats most of them at TCO.
The weak point in servers isn't usually the OS, its the server/application. I could care less about the OS if the web server dies every day.
Why should I buy RedHat rather than HP or Sun or even a free Linux distribution? If RedHat is going to fight on lower costs then they might as well pack up and go home.
Re:They aren't worried (Score:2, Insightful)
I migrated all my boxes (~ 20) from RedHat to FreeBSD about three years ago and haven't looked back since. If you're going to take the time to migrate all your machines to Debian, maybe you should consider setting up a FreeBSD box to play with.
No real migration path... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're trying to migrate a critical installation that can't be down for long periods of time, I guess you're SOL.
Re:APT for RPM (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Branding Move - it seems to be (Score:2, Insightful)
I think rebranding(if that's what it really is) is a huge mistake. I don't think they now lose that much money by confusion of the free vs Enterprise versions. Folks now get free RedHat with the understanding that it's kind of a RedHat 'lite', and they can get additional software/support with the Enterprise version.
The Fedora project seems to be different, and it doesn't seem as clear that it will move in lockstep as a 'lite' version. Moreover, there is no longer a name association with the Enterprise version. The free RedHat distro was the greatest advertising possible for the Enterprise version. (PHB's have all heard of RedHat, and of course they all love anything with 'Enterprise' in the description, as well as big support contracts) Fedora will not have that instant name recognition/association with RedHat Enterprise. Once all home users have moved to Fedora or other distro's, RedHat will become a lot less chic in the news. Less name recognition for the PHBs. And if it's not just a rebranding, the differences in the Fedora disro and RedHat Enterprise may be enough to lose any training/familiarity of it with RH Enterprise vs any other distro/commercial distro.
Re:Win NT (Score:3, Insightful)
Why Fedora is a Bad Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Quit yer trolling! (Score:2, Insightful)
Your notion of "free upgrades" would cost this cat nearly $3000 for the initial switch alone (and don't even mention buying used equipment, not an acceptable option considering Apple's current business model)... not to mention that regularly posted updates piped down from Apple won't cover the majority of his server needs.
Look, I'm not anti-mac. Hell, my old G4/400 is my recording studio and my Lombard is my portable networking tool (YDL 2.3), but switching platforms is not an an acceptable course of action just because your distro of choice forces you to examine an OS move.
RedHat's new business model will not end up with me tossing my RH 7.2 based K6 webserver or my RH 9 based XP2500+ anymore than this cat is going to toss his two perfectly usable systems.
If you want to justify your Macintosh zealotry... do it where it's warranted [macslash.org].
You damned evangelists are the whole reason I don't announce that I own Macs.
Walks off shaking head in disgust
And you... you, you bloody birkenstock wearing GNU hippies!
*pointing and grumbling at the snickering anti-social duo in the corner*
Put down that Mountain Dew, drop those multi-sided dice and pay attention! I've got a few choice words for you as well!
----
Re:G P L (Score:5, Insightful)
Red Hat will have to continue releasing any GPL'ed code in the same way they always have. You may not get any proprietary software, but I can't think of anything that was, in base Red Hat. I'm less concerned with the "no new Red Hat" than with "You've got two months to upgrade". Many vendors only support what RH supports, so vendors may no longer support their products on the free system, and that's a big headache for SA's.
Does no one who uses Red Hat Linux actually follow what's happening at Red Hat?? Sheesh, it's not like you didn't see see this coming. Let's clarify a few things:
If you're really all that bent out of shape because Red Hat isn't giving away their kick-ass Linux distribution for free anymore, then go download Fedora, or jump to another distribution. Personally, since I haven't had a complaint with Red Hat, I'm sticking with RHES/RHAS. We start our upgrade to RHES 3 in two weeks, and will be done by 2/28/04. Yes, that's two months after the end of support, so I'm on my own for those two months. We have a lot of servers, so the upgrade will take time.
Get over it.
-jh
Why is this news? (Score:3, Insightful)
2. The fact that RedHat will not produce a RedHat-branded free Linux distro was also known for a while.
3. Finally, the fact that RedHat's free Linux distro will be developed jointly with the Fedora project was also announced here [slashdot.org] a few weeks ago.
So, I am not sure why is this even being posted on the Slashdot front page. This is non-news.
Re:A sad day (Score:1, Insightful)
Trying to compete with Microsoft for small biz users seems foolish. You have to price it so low, there's no money there.
Re:A sad day (Score:1, Insightful)
If a user had a server install of "regular" Red Hat and wanted support they could have easily sold him on the Enterprise Version that comes with support.
Almost every Red Hat user would have upgraded to Red Hat 10 when it came out--I doubt you can say that about Fedora.
They spent many years building the Red Hat name and throw it all away? I guess they are hoping that all business users (small shops included) will pay for the Enterprise version upfront. Seems like most small companies will just install Suse or Mandrake now.
Re:They aren't worried (Score:5, Insightful)
What's foolish is some slashdotters' simplistic ideas about business.
Of course that's not to say that this move is going to help them. The side effect of making Red Hat less visible may well cost them more than they save, but if they can't find a profitable business model, they'll disappear anyway.
$60 was costing them money? (Score:5, Insightful)
This wasn't profitable?!?
Fedora's rapid-update cycle ruins it for me, keeping machines on software/releases that are "patchable", without an upgrade, will simply take to much effort
Re:They aren't worried (Score:4, Insightful)
Open-source hypocrisy (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want a free and supported commercial Linux distro, do what the Europeans have done with SuSE- use anti-American/Anti-Capitalist/Anti-Microsoft sentiment to sway governments and businesses toward it. But don't get mad because a Linux business needs a business model appropriate to its locale and customers.
Red Hat is still here (Score:4, Insightful)
The original Fedora project is here [fedora.us] and the new Red Hat/Fedora project is here [redhat.com]
I have been using Fedora Core 1 test 3 for a while now and it is really great. The up2date client can now get updates from apt and yum repositories and makes it even easier to get third party products into your Red Hat/Fedora desktop. The release of Fedora Core 1 should be out soon. Go to Fedora [fedora.us] and get on one of their meailing lists, they are very active and it will give you a much better idea of what is REALLy going on.
The only real difference now is that if you want paid support, you will have to use one of the Red Hat Enterprise versions since Fedora Core will be community supported.
Re:A sad day (Score:5, Insightful)
So they are going to rely on Volunteers to do the work for them? It seems a little dirty that RH has decided that they want to use the community to provide Fedora -- to maintain this 'farmiliarity' -- but not do it in house.
Have a look at the mailing lists and who is doing the work. RedHat is hosting Fedora and their developers are working on it as well. They are doing it in house, but out in the open and allowing the community to participate in the process.
Re:A sad day (Score:3, Insightful)
Rah Rah RedHa--huwaah? (Score:3, Insightful)
And just to ward off the notion that we're complete freeloaders, the success of linux at the small server level has led us to consider RHAS for our oracle environment. We'll probably still consider it, but there's no way we're ever going to see RHEL WS corporate-wide at these prices ($299/yr per workstation?). For free workstations, you might be able to convince the folks in the offices with doors that a migration might be worth the pain. Trying to sell them the pain *and* higher prices... well, the best I could ever hope for would be a good laugh.
Re:Crud. (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people, most sysadmins even, aren't kernel hackers. They want their personal system to be reasonably stable. I don't mind running Debian Testing, but I'm very selective about what I accept from unstable.
To me this seems a move calculated to drive away the majority of people who had been using Red Hat. This means that those people won't be recommending it any more, they'll recommend whatever they use. And these are the people who'll be writing the RFPs, and who'll be sitting on the bid evaluation committees. Or even will just go out and install whatever they think is best (depending on the project).
To me this seems a bad move, one which may generate short term profits, but which will leave a withered corpse after a few years. (OTOH, it should send profits UP for the next couple of quarters, or even three.)
Re:A sad day (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't consider Fedora to be any more unstable then RH 10 would have been.
Furthermore, if you can't get the $350 together to buy the enterprise version for a work-related project then you have other problems.
Re:A serious question (Score:3, Insightful)
Open source software doesn't feed the family so what do all those out of work developers do? It seems to me that OSS is like a virus that eventually consumes its host, thus ending its own life.
If all software was being written to be an end product then this might be a real problem. However very few programmers actually write software that is sold as a product. Most software is written as part of a larger product, the embedded software 'market' is bigger that Microsoft! Also custom software for one off jobs employs a huge number of programmers. The markets that open source replaces is just the tip of the iceburg in the programming profession!
Re:A sad day (Score:5, Insightful)
You would use RHEL over a competing Linux distro mainly for the strong support of other software vendors like Oracle, and IBM (Java, WebSphere Studio, ClearCase). Sure these applications will most likely work on other distros, but the systems are already designed to play nicely with RHEL and vice versa.
This is completely wrong, at least for our situation. I work as a EE using tools from places like Cadence and Mentor Graphics (EDA stuff - spice, schematic, layout, etc), and currently ALL the tools support old UNIX OSs. HP/UX and Solaris are the main choices. Tool vendors just recently started porting their apps to Linux (for the most part they picked RH, sometimes SuSE also).
The main selling point for Linux for us is hardware NOT software. I can get a more powerful AMD64 or P4 box a LOT cheaper than a Sun U60 or HP C3700 (and those aren't exactly high-end these days either). A lot of the cost advantage comes from the OS side. I'm trying to get the people here to convert to Linux, but RH just took a lot of the motivation away. People are going to argue, why should we pay to move to an unproven platform, when the cost saving is so little. The tools we use play nicely on Solaris and HP/UX, and RH is the unsupported one. For the AMD64, RedHat Enterprise Linux WS costs $792 per node!! We could buy a single set and copy the hell out of it, but thats probably forbidden somewhere (yes/no?)
I can tell you there is NO way we are going to replace 500 workstations with an unproven OS costing $800/box. I mean get real, where the heck did they pull this $792 number from, their stupid red hat?!? IMO, RH just shot itself in the foot...
Re:A sad day (Score:1, Insightful)
Not counting hardware of course. If you spend a little of your spare time reading on which packages to apt-get, you could easily tune a Debian system to be every bit as tight as what RedHat could charge you for. They don't use magic to arrive at their destination.
RedHat is the first distro I ever used. It was my introduction to Linux, and I'm glad I had the experience of using it. I swapped from RedHat to LFS when it was time to do another Linux system. LFS was what I'd really wanted when I installed Redhat. I'm personally glad that RedHat is doing what they're doing. If they make more money, they can do more R&D. If they do more R&D, there's more of a chance that something will fall into the free (as in cash) arena. This is good.
Re:They should be (Score:5, Insightful)
My brother could never understand this. "You can't make any money that way. You have to charge them by the hour."
But I didn't make money from this and didn't even intend to. That $3 a day added up to cover the fixed costs I had just to remain open whether someone gave me a few bucks or not. Rent, insurance, etc. all coverd by that nominal fee. That meant every penny I took in for racing, cars, parts, snacks, etc. was pure profit, profit that otherwise would have been eaten up by rent, insurance. .
I loved the fact that my customers payed me money to allow me to sell them tires and Coke.
But more importantly it generated traffic. There were always people hanging about and playing with their cars. That made my place the place to go hang out and play with your cars. When new people showed up there were people there, hanging out, playing with cars. Cool!
That made my place the place to race. Which is where I made my money!
I think Red Hat would be standing there with my brother saying, "But how do you make any money only charging them $3 a day?"
Arrrrrgh!
KFG
Re:No more income from me then (Score:5, Insightful)
Its like the world was in Red Hat 5 and 6, because with business split off you can go both ways.
Re:A sad day (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A sad day, Who'll be king next... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just accept that it is difficult, hence marketing. Bob Young(now gone from RH) said it best. It's all about branding. This will seriously hurt the brand and slow any new blood from jumping on board.
They could have done the same thing structurally and still called it Red Hat Linux. But now people will rightly say, "So why did they change the name?"
Expect to see an attempt at back-pedaling in two years, but it will be to late.
Who will be the next distro king? Who will get all that dirt cheap cross branding for the services their company offers...
Re:A sad day (Score:5, Insightful)
The Red Hat name. When I bring folks down to my data center to give them the "Blinking Lights" tour, I can no longer announce we run the bank of computers on "Red Hat Linux". Doesn't matter that Fedora is the same basic OS that gave RHL its strong brand name in the first place. They don't hear the name, they'll think "cheap knock off".
Why not just break down and buy RHEL? Cost. For what it will cost to "upgrade" all my linux boxes I fought hard to get installed in lieu of Windows, I could be serval new servers, which personally I'd rather have. Hell, I can't even claim cost savings anymore, because RHEL is a yearly subscription, and for a typical 3 year lifespan of hardware, $299x3 > $799 once for Windows server 2003.
What does this mean? We IT folks basically have to "Steal the Brand" back. Tell upper management Fedora IS the version of Linux thats been running your servers so reliably for the last 5 years.
Two words: mind share (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I do understand producing their "Red Hat Linux" product was expensive, and hurt their bottom line. They should have never split their product in two to begin with. Maintaining both RHL and Enterprise Linux was too much of a burden on the company. It reeks of bad management, much like the Mozilla project does (They are trying to develop no less than three different browsers at the moment, possibly more depending on how you count--and Netscape just cut them lose, so they're severely understaffed... you'd think they'd make consolidation efforts--but this is another tirade).
What they should have done is modularize their base product, and sell add-ons. They retain all of their users, all of their mind share, only have to develop one product, AND it can act as a stepping stone into your Enterprise-level services. Hell! They even had the infrastructure to do a single core product all laid out with Red Hat Network. Sell an Enterprise Web Server channel add-on to Red Hat Linux 10 for Enterprise-level prices, and so on. It would have been beautiful. Really.
It would have also provided their Enterprise customers with ten-times the amount of testing of the core OS. This is not to be underestimated. Much as Linus renames a kernel from e.g. 2.5.79 to 2.6.0-test1 when he wants (free!) wider testing, Red Hat now has a user base one-tenth the size to "test" their releases on. And problems that aren't caught in relase QA (many just can't be) will now HAVE to affect (high-)paying customers. There's no free users to take 90% of the falls.
Red Hat produced the de facto Linux distribution in the United States AND they were in the black. There was nothing to stop them. They provided a free, high quality alternative OS. People were switching to Linux, and switching to Red Hat. It was working. But apparently not fast enough for them.
Windows users have no highly visible, high quality alternative now. (No, it's NOT necessary to chime in with your favorite distribution.) What's good for Linux was good for Red Hat, and this is unquestionably bad for Linux, medium-term, at least.
Fedora does NO ONE any good. It's pseudo-managed by Red Hat, but with no guarantees, no support, no Red Hat Network, no Enterprise add-ons, and regular Joe-Schmoe developers fucking it up (cf. Debian). And the mix of open development and corporate bureaucracy, neither with any vision, is sure to pull and tug at it in no general direction, making it nothing more than a poor Debian clone. I wonder how long until Red Hat cut's it lose completely.
It's a sad day for Red Hat. Up until they split their product line last year, I was considering investing in the company. They had a real handle on the market. Now, they have nothing to drive themselves into becoming a big player. They'll remain a small service-oriented company. If they remain at all. (They kind of remind me of BSDi now. Probably not an association they would like.)
And it's a sad day for Linux. But I have faith the (huge) void will be filled. Will Debian step up? Someone new? It should be interesting, at least.
[Wow. That turned out to be longer than I'd expected. If I wasn't hungover I'd actually invest a little more time and proofread it. Hope it's been an interesting read, if anyone made it this far. Hey, e-mail me if you did! Tell me if you agree, or if I'm crazy, or both. Or just say hi! I'm bored. No one sends letters these days. The Internet's become so impersonal. But that's a whole nother tirade.]
bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
What really happens is this:
Red Hat Inc. will cease to use the "Red Hat" label on its free distribution (previously known as "Red Hat Linux"), and continue using it exclusively on its paid-for distribution (a.k.a. RHEL - "Red Hat Enterprise Linux"). "Red Hat Linux" will become "Fedora Linux", and RHEL will continue to be the paid-for distribution.
Neither of these distributions will change in its inner core and/or "philosophy", with one exception: Red Hat will loose its grip a little
bit on Fedora (previously known as "Red Hat Linux"), which will become more open. Think of it as a combination between the old Red Hat Linux, and a non-corporate free Unix distribution such as Debian or FreeBSD.
Otherwise, the core of the development effort on Fedora will continue to be provided by Red Hat - hence the term "Fedora Core" used for the releases.
Essentially, Red Hat expects to continue as before with the development of the distribution, it's just that they opened the doors for contributions from outside related to packages of a secondary importance.
In fact, future versions of the paid-for RHEL will actually be older branches of Fedora Linux, plus proprietary additions by Red Hat Inc.
The older RH Linux versions (6.x, 7.x, 8) will become unsupported by Red Hat on Dec 31 2003, while RHL 9 will continue to be supported until Apr 30 2004. "Unsupported" meaning that Red Hat will not provide updates anymore. That's normal, and in fact it was amazing they continued to support 6.x for so long.
Fedora Linux will get a mixed support model: Red Hat will support Fedora releases for limited amounts of time (shorter than the
lifetime of the 6.x releases anyway!), together with support from the community built around the Fedora Project (a la Debian); once the
"official" Red Hat support for a certain Fedora version disappears, its the community support that will continue to provide updates for it.
My estimate is that the support provided by the community will actually last for a lot longer than the "official" support - see the case of the non-corporate Unix distributions such as Debian, FreeBSD, etc. which are supported for long periods of time.
Obviously, Red Hat is trying to draw as much attention as they can to their RHEL product, which is where their money come from. But i feel that, during this whole change, their "market droids" did a poor job of explaining what's really going on.
Hence the rumors that "Red Hat Linux goes away, everyone must buy RHEL or migrate to something else" etc. Oh wait, but then they did a _good_ job!
Fedora Core 1 (or "the distribution formerly known as Red Hat Linux 10") is scheduled for release this week.
Re:A sad day (Score:4, Insightful)
My guess is that the decision to re-name the free version came from the marketing group. I bet they want to take advantage of the well-known Red Hat name to publish the more profitable Enterprise version as the 'gold standard' OS that a middle manager can justify putting on an important server system, while Fedora will gradually become identified with the 'hippies, hackers, and poor students' crowd. I suppose that this is a way for them to get around the 'free software is for commies' view of some of the higher-ups in business and make a buck at the same time. Not a big deal in my view, and maybe not even entirely crazy from a business plan point of view.
Re:A sad day (Score:2, Insightful)
But we hate Dell for making the same realization (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet, I STILL see posts about how Dell (and other major PC manufacturers that don't sell Linux to home consumers) is lame because they got rid of Linux as a choice for home computers.
It comes down to support. It is not yet cost effective for a corporation to support Linux on the home desktop. Dell learned it a couple years ago, and now Red Hat agrees.
If you're not going to beat up Red Hat over this (I wouldn't), you should not beat up PC manufacturers for making the same decision.
Re:A sad day (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What You Need To Know In A Nutshell. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the bulk of RH users are spoiled by auto-updates available directly from RH. This means that systems get updated with no fuss on a regular basis. Not only that, but RH puts significant effort into adding value into the distro. This means that anyone who cobbles together a RH-knockoff distro will always have to play catch up just to remain relevant. Next there is the issue of funding. You can download the source code, compile it, put it together into a distro, test it, and image it; all for very little additional outlay (aside from your time). Put that beast up for download though, and you will finally start costing someone some money. Finally, there is the RH trademark. Which distro are you going to trust: Red Hat or Joe Blow Distro.
Open source is a formidable trump card against organizations that would abuse their position of trust and power in the software world to make profits in an unethical fashion. We should recognize though, that until organizations such as Red Hat do profit through unethical means, that they do indeed deserve to profit from their efforts. Open source does not always mean free beer, but it should always mean free speech. Ultimately, should the open source community become disgruntled enough with a given open source vendor, we could always take back the power we have ceded to them. It would take time, and could be painful, but at least it's possible. Such a source of action is not possible with proprietary software though.
Re:Redhat Crippleware (Score:4, Insightful)
What, Red Hat forced you to buy their stock? Instead of asking for an apology, you should thank them for having the integrity to price their stock IPO at an honest $7 (relative to your purchase after the stock split once) a share during the height of dot-com mania. If you'd waited until after it dipped down to $7 again, and bought it at the price they suggested it was worth, you could have sold it today and doubled your money.
The last time Red Hat offered a stock-related freebie to their supporters (the IPO offer to everyone who'd ever given them so much as a bugzilla report, not to mention code), they took a lot of flak from the confusion of it. Imagine how much fun they'd have sorting out a "everyone who claims to have bought RHAT during the dot com bubble gets a free subscription" policy!
Just like OpenOffice and StarOffice? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A serious question (Score:3, Insightful)
The short answer is that the market will figure it out.
First, it's important to note that the vast majority of software engineers don't write products that are sold. They write software for in-house use in a business, on on a contract for another business. Nothing will change. Those businesses still need specialized software and will pay for them. So even if Free Software destroys the market for off-the-shelf software, the majority of programming jobs will continue to exist.
Second, someone still needs the software. If there is damand, someone will figure out how to charge for it. Perhaps companies will pool their money to fund projects that they can all use. Perhaps individual companies will hire someone to add a feature or set of features that they need. Some enterprising person or company might try the Street Performer Protocol [firstmonday.dk]. Companies might develop the software to support non-free data set (The Doom VIII source is free, but the game levels cost money. Movie studios might fund video encoders and players so that they can distribute trailers.) Companies might sell support and use the revenue to keep the authors of the Free Software around (who better to provide the support). Many of these ideas are already in place and work just fine. I expect we'd see some combination of all of the above, plus some more ideas I haven't thought of.
Ultimately I don't know. It's possible (maybe even likely) that the market for software engineers will shrink. I do worry about that. But the industry won't be destroyed. There is a market for the product and the market will figure something out. The replacement might not be as profitable, it might not support as many developers, but something will appear. There is no risk of software development ending forever.
A bit defensive, aren't we? It's Slashdot. Just mellow out and ignore the stupid people.