[clug] Fedora and the future of RedHat

[Daniel McNamara]

I do agree the enterprise Red Hat stuff is a little over priced (the 
Enterprise workstation is actually only $495 AU a pop which still makes 
it cheaper than Win XP - I think). As for who releases the patches well 
I believe Red Hat still will by means of being a central place for 
Fedora. Bug reports for Fedora still go into Red Hat's bugzilla and each 
one I've filed has been dealt with and fixed by Red Hat people. If you 
read the FAQ on the Fedora site you'll see:

"Q: What is the errata policy for The Fedora Project?

A: Security updates, bugfix updates, and new feature updates will all be 
available, through Red Hat and third parties. Updates may be staged 
(first made available for public qualification, then later for general 
consumption) when appropriate. In drastic cases, we may remove a package 
from The Fedora Project if we judge that a necessary security update is 
too problematic/disruptive to the larger goals of the project. 
Availability of updates should not be misconstrued as support for 
anything other than continued development and innovation of the code base.

Red Hat will not be providing an SLA (Service Level Agreement) for 
resolution times for updates for The Fedora Project. Security updates 
will take priority. For packages maintained by external parties, Red Hat 
may respond to security holes by deprecating packages if the external 
maintainers do not provide updates in a reasonable time. Users who want 
support, or maintenance according to an SLA, may purchase the 
appropriate Red Hat Enterprise Linux product for their use. "

Fedora still comes with up2date which is fully functional and now 
supports yum and apt (plus the ability to work with third party package 
stores). Plus it has a nice little rollback system that makes system 
upgrades a little less terrfiying when a downgrade is required because 
the upgrade broke something.

I personally feel Fedora has been a great move. Basically if you want 
the slow Debian like release cycle then you pay for the Enterprise 
material (all the pricing is on the Austrlian Red Hat site) and if you 
don't mind dealing with shorter life cycles then Fedora is the go.

Honestly I don't know all the answers to this but the Red Hat guys on 
the Fedora mailing lists/IRC channels are extremely helpful and can 
probably do better than I.

Cheers

Daniel


Michael Cohen wrote:

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> 
> Daniel,
> 
> - From the below URL: "It is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc. "
> does this mean that red hat will not be responsible for releasing patches etc, 
> for it? will it affect the time at which patches are available? 
> 
> If it is not supported by redhat it will need a large user community like 
> debian currently has to ensure a quick patch cycle (even debian is a little 
> slow at times). In an enterprise you really do need that kind of support and 
> I believe the Redhat Enterprise Linux (the version supported by rh) at 
> $1350.00 a pop is way overpriced (it is more than windows in some 
> orgenizations with MS site licenses). 
> 
> This could really affect the takeup of linux in the enterprise. RH is seen as 
> the standard linux in the enterprise (because it gets the most publicity) and 
> asking people for that much money for a product which has been effectively 
> free so far really kills any business economy. People were counting on this 
> economy in the linux migration and this is something they have not expected.
> 
> I personally think debian is most appropriate for the enterprise but most 
> managers never heard of it nor do they trust it because there is no company 
> behind it. RH finally got to the stage where it is accepted, and it was 
> actually making money recently, but now i fear we will see a mass migration 
> away from rh, to the detriment of linux in general.
> 
> I would have been happy to use the up2date service to patch my servers but i 
> was informed that i will need to buy the es edition as of next year, because 
> up2date would not be sold seperately any more - i am having second thoughts 
> now if to continue with rh at all.
> 
> maybe i have a big misunderstanding on the whole issue. opinions anyone?
> 
> Michael.
>