Microsoft comes under regular fire for its apparent eagerness to end-of-life its products, making them more difficult and expensive to support, and hence forcing users to upgrade to the next version. But without fanfare Red Hat has quietly introduced its own approach to end-of-life, and compared to this, Microsoft’s idea of an upgrade cycle looks pretty sedate. As of the release of Red Hat 8.0, the company is only guaranteeing errata maintenance for the 12 months following a product’s release.
Red Hat Intros 12 Month Only Support on ‘Consumer’ OSes
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I’m hoping freshrpms will keep up to date with their files so I can keep using apt-get for my Redhat 7.3 which I feel no compulsion to upgrade to newer versions.
the disaffected linux users will come in here and explain to us why this a much more sane way of doing things than windows. In fact, RH is looking out for us by doing this most likely.
>In fact, RH is looking out for us by doing this most likely.
Or because it is simply much cheaper to do so this way.
The other day people were so pissed because DirectX 9 wouldn’t work on Windows 95 (an OS released 7.5 years ago), and now that Red Hat is restricting the support to only 12 months, everyone is fine and daddy.
Talk about objectivity…
Well I’ve been running Mandrake 7.0 and Red Hat 6.2 for years now and both have been out of circulation. I don’t bother with distributions anymore. I upgrade when the applications I use need upgrading. That includes all of the GNU tools, Mozilla, and stuff like that. Heck my Mandrake and RH boxes don’t even resemble those when they came out of the box. If RH wants to only have one year support on the desktop OS, they better reevaluate or people like myself will go without their support.
I have to say that the people complaining about Microsofts eagerness to end-of-life products are seriously deluded.
Windows 95 has JUST NOW been end-of-lifed, and it is a 7 year old product. Windows 98 is end-of-lifed in june 2004, and will be 6 years old. About the same goes for Windows NT. Windows 2000 professional will be end-of-lifed in 2008.
I don’t really see the big problem with this. How long are you supposed to continue to support a product?
Be aware that I’m no Microsoft supporter. I almost exclusively use Linux, and MS has plenty of other shady practises. There is no point in picking on them for the things that are actually ok.
Red Hat is proposing 12 months? That is a bit on the short side, but businesses should purchase a professional version instead. I hope they change their mind though. 12 months is too short a time for anything, and the 36 months guaranteed for Advanced Server is also way too short.
the disaffected linux users will come in here and explain to us why this a much more sane way of doing things than windows.
If anything wouldn’t “disaffected linux users” pounce on this as a reason for their disaffection?
I didn’t pay anything for the RH Linux I’m using, I don’t see why Red Hat should be compelled to keep it up to date just to keep a freeloader like me happy. 🙂
(that said, I do feel this is not good business practice to customers who have paid for it.)
You don’t have to pay for the upgrade if you don’t want to. The iso’s are usually ubiquitous. Besides subscriptions with RedHat network are not dependent on the version you run. You can just switch over your entitlements to the new profile.
You can’t compare this with what microsoft is doing. Every version of the software needs a new license and you need to pay for it.
So the burden is on them to surport it if you’ve bought it and it would cost you to upgrade it, or it is on you to upgrade it if you’ve either gotten it for free, or a supportable upgrade is available for free.
Alright,
I admit, 12 month is really short…
Though remember that upgrade will still cost you nothing but the time to install it…
This may be a hassle for companies…
I could be worse.
>Though remember that upgrade will still cost you nothing but the time to install it…
This is a common misconception people have about Linux.
Most companies don’t get Red Hat Linux for free. They pay for it, because they want support. Companies are seeking support. For them, it is more important than having the actual OS for free.
Another thing that people don’t understand, is that upgrading your OS can break your application that your company is depedant on. When you have a company which still runs RH 7.2 because their app was written to run well on that specific version, and then you are pushed to upgrade just because RH doesn’t want to support your OS anymore, and after you do upgrade you see that GCC 3.2 and glibc 2.3 is breaking your app, or creating crashing bugs, then you are out of luck. It would need time to see what’s wrong, and IF you have the source for your app you could recompile it, and then re-test it… All that stuff costs money and it is unacceptable for a company.
Such an example is Oracle. It only provides support ONLY for specific versions of Red Hat Linux. Now, if RH is pushing you on upgrade and then you lose support from Oracle, that’s really bad.
I know that my husband’s company still use Win2k and they don’t want to upgrade to XP because it breaks some apps they need to use. Same goes for their Solaris box, they don’t want to upgrade it becsause of some specific tools they run there. And that situation is even more critical on Linux, since Linux flavors break compatibilities with their every version much easier than other OSes do.
Of course, Red Hat has only stopped support for the “consumer” version of Red Hat, but still, not every company bought Advanced Server. Not all needed it.
I believe that this decision was simply a way to cut costs on running Red Hat, the company. Nothing more. Except Red Hat, no one else will see any benefits from this decision.
You’re absolutely correct
However I still don’t see the point of the comparison to Microsoft.
If this is really a matter of the cost of maintaining the errata on a longer term basis, wouldn’t a better option be to simply price 12+ month support at a higher rate.
To me a better business practice would be to price this at what it’s work (through RHN) and get on with it.
Change is inevitable in the software environment. I’m surprised that such a topic should be brought forth. Like an earlier post indicated, Upgrade only IF you want to.
Any ways some of us have also decided to support what will NOT be supported so we can be making some money on the side. Let the money be distributed around instead of being with only ONE company – which in this case will be RedHat. Now everyone (well, a lot of folks) are/is pissed with Microsoft because they’re soooooo damn rich. The sad thing with Microsoft is that you can not get the source code. With Linux, the source is available for everyone. Stop the whinning, get serious and let’s make some serious money instead of pointing to another company and complaining.
kwasi
Yet another reason to use Debian. Yeah yeah, some of the apps arn’t the latest version, but the thing is stable as a rock.
The average consumer does NOT want to upgrade constantly. Even MORE true for corporate users.
RH must be having major financial difficulties. Mandrake anyone?
As Eugenia points out, some company cannot upgrade because some appliation would be broken. On the oher side they need the security fixes. It is NOT an answer to say “you have the source code…” because these companies are not in the software business and certainly not in the Linux operating system business!
On the other hand, support over a long period of time is very costly for Redhat. I guess the only solution for Redhat is to charge a premium in support for a 12+ month support. I would be surprised, as Redhat wants to get most of their revenue from service, that they will not provide that.
If companies are using a specific version of a OS for a specific application, I really don’t see why they would need the OS Companys support. Because people are not going to do anything else with that computer or OS. And people at the said company should already be trained how to use the software that is specificly there to meet the companys needs.
If you really need that much tech support on a dedicated application
then your probably not using quality software, or your IT people are really stupid.
pls, enlighten me, stupid non-corporate Joe!
Supposedly company has 500 Win 95 machines. Now they should upgrade to XP to get support – it will cost $500*200 approximitely. (that even without new MS licensing scheme!)
No another company has 500 RH 9 desktops, and should upgrade to RH 10. How much it will cost? In order to get support. Also 500*200 ? I really don’t know
>stupid non-corporate Joe!
You are indeed.
>Now they should upgrade to XP to get support
After 7.5 years, they better do. They will make a favor to themselves.
> No another company has 500 RH 9 desktops, and should upgrade to RH 10. How much it will cost? In order to get support. Also 500*200 ? I really don’t know
It might cost the same, or it might cost less. Companies have special contracts with MS and they get the OS cheaper than you find it on the market. But that doesn’t matter. Support matters more than the actual OS cost.
Another mistake you do is that you think about the “Now”. You don’t think about the tomorrow.
With Red Hat’s new policy, this company you are reffering to, they HAVE to upgrade EVERY 12 months (remember: companies WANT support). This my friend, is simply unacceptable for 99% of the companies out there. And not only for the reasons I mentioned in my previous comment.
Please make me a favor and never try to run a company. 😉
If you require a longer support period, you can get one with RHAS or the soon to be announced corporate desktop. As apps like oracle are only being certified on RHAS now anyway, it’s nothing like as big a deal as Eugenia would have you believe.
almost by definition, linux people are disaffected. mostly by microsoft, but then by other things as well, like apple having nice looking computers, bsd having a nice VMM, open bsd not being swiss cheese. You name it, it probably pisses them off if it doesn’t run linux. Thats what I meant by disaffected linux people.
As for my first post Eugenia, it was sarcastic
I really see no way how this is beneficial for us 
Microsoft has to maintain and deal only with Microsoft software. Other than the installer and a couple of other packages, redhat is expected to ensure the delivery of all those open source packages?
It’s not like RH has the control over the packages the way MS does. RH can’t force os projects to adhere to guidlines and what-not in an attempt to lengthen their support period.
Also keep in mind that RH has zeroed in on un-earthing Unix. Their advanced server is their path to money and staying alive and their standard ISO’s off the site are for us…the people who support ourselves.
Typically in a large corporate, certain versions of each program are supported. This includes OSs. Take Solaris for example, if version 8 is the current certified version, support is going to bring all installations up to version 8. The reason is to reduce variation in the installed base. It is much easier to maintain a support staff who only needs to know the caveats surrounding a single version.
To the comment that companies running applications that only work on a specific version of linux, should just leave those at that revision and upgrade the rest. This clashes with having a uniform version deployed to maximize productivity and efficiency. While that is workable for a one-off here and there, what happens when you accumulate multiple applications which require a specific OS version which is no longer supported? It becomes a support nightmare.
With respect to the cost of an OS, from a corporate standpoint. If OS Y costs me $200 and OS Z is free, but OS Y is supported for 5 years while OS Z is only supported for a year, OS Y is significantly cheaper from a TCO standpoint. I have to burn cycles to do yearly upgrades with OS Z to remain on a supported version. When I am managing an IT department for 30,000 employees, this is a major issue.
This returns us back to discussing what is appropriate for the Desktop. This discussion always forgets to take scale into effect. How do I, hypothectically, as a CIO build a support organization to manage the desktop deployment for 30,000 employees.
I cannot expect more than 1-2% to completely manage their own system. This means that I must provide staffing to support and possible re-training for every end user if I change desktop platforms. I cannot shut down operations for a week while the entire company learns how to work with the new OS and become accustomed to OpenOffice instead of MS Office. Excuses about why I do not have full functionality in this new OS that I had in the previous one are not acceptable. I need my employees productive and fully empowered to do their jobs, even if they have to reboot their computers every 4 hrs.
The OSS model also is not conducive to the desktop. I require certain functionality for my employees to get their work done. When I complain about certain features lacking and the response is that I should shut up because I should be grateful to even have this application for free, or that the code is available and that I should have those extensions developed in house, this is totally unacceptable.
Companies cannot and will not base their ability to do business on the whims of some group of hackers volunteering their time to a project. There is to much money involved, support and accountability are a requirement.
So, back to the topic of support cycles. This is just another nail in the TCO coffin against Linux. Yes, I understand it is RH and there are tons of other distros. Problems is they all have their own issues also. With the status quo, I have a set of known risks and a known cost structure.
This is not a geek issue, it’s a business issue. Technical merit is not the driving factor here.
– Kelson
There goes the years of uptime.
Hopefully RedHat will rescind this. This sounds a little nuts.
One way around this is to run dumb terminals with one main system. Then you Might as well go RHAS. This is quite a nuissance. RedHat is beginning to remind of the Dwarves from the Hobbit. Well, Okay, not really. Gnomes?
However, I’ve never tried upgrading from one version of Redhat to another. I plan to soon. Maybe they should do releases once a year and extend the Erratta for 2 years. Also, keep in mind that 1 year is guaranteed, meaning the other years are possible.
Otherwise, all those 6.2 boxes will be updated by .tgz manually and other non-redhat boxes. Worst thing about this is it breaks the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” rule.
This and Microsoft dropping support is such a non-issue if you pay for support for either product. Both companies – if you pay for support – will work with you.
Our Redhat boxes were a cinch to upgrade. The Windows 9x to XP required us to backup all of the data and wipe the old OS, installing XP. This is what support costs are for.
By the way, if you are running an application that requires a spcific version of Windows, Unix, or Linux you really should know better.
>> pls, enlighten me, stupid non-corporate Joe!
>> Supposedly company has 500 Win 95 machines. Now they should >> upgrade to XP to get support – it will cost $500*200
>> approximitely. (that even without new MS licensing scheme!)
You should fire the IT people who thought that Microsoft wouldn’t update their operating system. Part of being in business is learning to adapt to the changing environment around you. Yes, the new licensing scheme hurts – we have over 50,000 users having to upgrade – but, that is a reality we accepted when we chose Microsoft over the alternatives.
Does anybody here work at a company that actually runs redhat? How many times have you called them for support? How many of you have had all these exagerrated scenarios that people are theorising about? Linux IT people are more likely to be technically savvy. The internet is like an infinite encyclopaedia, and we all not how to support ourselves on it.
Redhat and linux are not yet at a point where they can release a product and then go to sleep for the next three years. And if they improve products every few months, it is going to be realistically tough to support every one of them. Don’t forget, folks, that lot of things are still coming together in the linux world -binary/backwards compatibility, standardisation, even financial viability for companies, etc. Linux is still playing catchup to more established OSes, and the only way it is going to catch up and surpass them is by maintaining the current pace of development. Until that stage is reached, asking Redhat to act like multi-billionaire Gates is simply foolish and unrealistic.
In Britain the Sale of Goods Act gaurantees a refund where a product does not perform as advertised or is not of merchantable quaility. My own perspective is that where a bug is detected, it should be fixed for free and/or a free upgrade to the next working version issued. Breaking applications between OS versions should be similarly intolerated. These are not costs that should be carried by the customer. While it’s an ideal it might encourage companies to pay more attention to quality assurance if this view were taken by more customers.
If you are concerned about updates, and you don’t want to have to upgrade every year, you should use Redhat Advanced Server. They mainitain support on each release for 3 years.
This is mentioned in the article, BTW.
Yes, but.
Companies can do their job just fine by only buying the PRO version, which is much cheaper.
Also, don’t forget the “corporate desktop” push that Red Hat is trying to pull through. If you have a company with 50,000 corporate desktops, trust me, you don’t want to upgrade every 12 months. And for these corporate desktops the Advanced Server is both unsuitable and expensive.
No matter how I look at it, 12 months of support is just not enough if you are a company who depends on other software that is supported on a specific version of the OS.
12 months is definatley insufficient.
The real problem here is that it is not really about calling up redhat 2 years later and asking how to install something. It is about if an application develops a security problem two years later and it is patched redhat will not release a patched version for their OS. Of course if you have good IT they could package such a version but it still is a large hassle. If you are going to patch it yourself why buy support in the first place?
I use Slackware don’t ask me about what I really think of Redhat
Eugenia,
You are absolutly right. s_d, you have totally no idea what you are talking about. MS has volume licenses that cost less than retail; a lot less. Also, if your machines runs Win95, it should be > 5 years. It has already been completely amortized so buying new boxes is far cheaper to maintain. So with these new boxes, you can either get vendor to ship with XP or you buy MS Select Licences.
The same reason that boxes on Win95/Win98 so long is the same that companies will want to keep the same version for RH Prof. If the support is 1 year, I’ll be no medium to large company is going to use it.
The real problem here is that it is not really about calling up redhat 2 years later and asking how to install something. It is about if an application develops a security problem two years later and it is patched redhat will not release a patched version for their OS.
A security hole, particularly when it hits the public domain, counts the product as being of unmerchantable quality in my book. Companies should be compelled to offer a free fix or free upgrade. Not to do so looks like milking the customer.
The whole notion of open source means that anyone can maintain the source code! Redhat creates the distro. That’s their main function.
I have w2k Pro on one of my desktops. When I recently had a question, I used one of my support cases and called Microsoft.
My problem: the file sharing ports weren’t being open on my network adapters.
Their solution: reformat and reinstall!
They blamed my problem on third party software, using a cross-over cable, a possibly bad BIOS, etc, etc….
In the end, Microsoft provided no real support what-so-ever!
I asked them: why are you telling me these things when the netbios over tcp service is not giving this obvious diagnostic. The couldn’t even tell me what certain error messages in my event log meant.
Everytime I was put on hold, I heard: you have access to the same knowledge base that our customer support representatives have at http://www.microsoft.com!
That’s why I value open source and that’s why I stand up for it. If I so care, I can look in the source code to find out how it’s supposed to work and then work backwards from their to determine the root cause of the problem.
Unlike Windows, third party venders are more than allowed to do FULL support/maintainence. This support might not be free, but neither is Microsofts.
And, I don’t believe that Microsoft fixes all their bugs! They fix the bugs that pay them money first and then do pro bono second. Their service packs are not known to be perfect.
Like Windows, the most supported installations of Redhat will most likely have money behind them, and money talks.
The benefit to Redhat and OSS is that the source code is open and everyone is allowed to look at it! Not just the big countries, NATO, microsoft’s employees!
>The whole notion of open source means that anyone can maintain the source code! Redhat creates the distro.
WRONG. The financial company, or the curtain-making company is not a software company. But they do have computers utilizing operating systems. It is not their job to fix the software problems themselves or pay someone else to do it. When you buy the OS from someone, you expect that company to support you. In any way. At least for 3-4 years.
This comment of yours came after Timothy from Slashdot wrote exactly that in the front page of Slashdot. And he is wrong on that assesement, as you are. Companies don’t work that way, neither are so idealistic as you would like to think “we have the source, we can fix it ourselves”. The whole point of having support is so you can offload the shit to the company who sold it to you.
By losing support, you lose the chance to sell your product to a serious company who doesn’t have an IT dept who are linux fanatics, but realists. If MS comes to them and tells them “we will support you for 5 years, and we can give you good prices on per seat”, this is what they want to hear! When Red hat goes there and tells them “here it is, you have support for 1 year, if it goes bad, you fix it yourselves”, then you have lost the game to MS, and it ain’t MS fault at all.
I know such a guy, who works for a large company that is considering RedHat Linux… For this company, RH Linux is just another Microsoft Windows: they pay for each copy so they can get support. I know there were complaints about the exxagerated turnover in versions of RH Linux, so this company was thinking of using Advanced Server, which has a somewhat longer lifespan. But I hope they reconsider, as it would be a rather stupid move, since even that lifespan is only 3 years. Compare that with Sun or IBM.
And don’t fool yourself thinking that the cost of upgrade is just the cost of buying a RedHat support license: to upgrade a server in a corporate environment is hugely expensive: you have to make detailed plans for the implementation, take in consideration all the tools that changed, all the scripts that will stop working for one reason or the other, take into consideration the change in the suppoted middleware products, take into consideration the more radical changes in filesystem and libraries etc etc etc.
Srry mate, to break it to you: companies don’t do that.
I know about bulk locenses.
I worked for middle-sized company for 3 years as IT. All-MS environment. (That’s worst nihtmare of my life, but it’s different story).
Onlu thing i tried to point at, we cannot compare apples and oranges, and should take in account all factors about different licensing and support schemes.
And for Watcher. Thanks for pointing me to facty that upgrade is cheap. You’re lucky and probably never met situation when cost of specifical additional hardware and software installed on old OS/PC is in tens or hundred times higher than OS/PC cost.
Read the following line carefully
If you are going to patch it yourself why buy support in the first place?
Now you should see that being Open source has nothing to do with it.
http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/fcc/lifecycle.html
My personal favorite, Novell, has some pretty impressive numbers, too: NetWare 3.12 has been discontinued in March 31st, 2000! That means, they have been supporting this product for 13 years! http://support.novell.com/lifecycle/eoltable.html
Mario, now you are talking!
THAT’S support!
All these Linux and Red Hat Linux apologists here just don’t see or don’t know how the system works regarding OSes and support. And what the companies expect from support.
With Red Hat only supporting their own products for only 1 year, that to me is laughable, I can’t take the company seriously!
I think this is bloody stupid. People aren’t going to upgrade to the latest and greatest mainly because of some security issues and bugs. They would just blame it on RH, or worse, Linux, if problems crop out.
Plus, if errata is so expensive to maintain, they should start charging for it. Because it is not only free loaders that are using it, RH Network customers are too. If someone downloads a set of ISO and installs it, let it be his problem about the upgrades. If he doesn’t like it, he can suscribe to errata.
That said, it is pretty hard to maintain errata. Open source software, not counting major ones like the kernel and Apache, don’t really support their old versions of their software. So Red Hat has to patch it up themselves. Just say there is a security problem in Nautilus 1.0, and the patch is only available to GNOME 2.0, RH has to back port.
Certainly this increases TCO to an non viable level in corporations u would be testing a new version while rolling out the current version at any point in time.
What they need is a middle ground for upgrades / errata such as a more expensive ‘RHN antiques’ perhaps just upgrading key components.
Keeps rhat a safe bet for the user while helping with higher support costs (for redhat) for inactive releases.
“The other day people were so pissed because DirectX 9 wouldn’t work on Windows 95 (an OS released 7.5 years ago), and now that Red Hat is restricting the support to only 12 months, everyone is fine and daddy.”
Yeah right! An you posted this comment after only 2 other people have posted a comment?
Allow me to show you the real world. Read all the other comments. Tons of people are complaing how RedHat is evil, half of them complaining about the same thing you are complaining about (that nobody complains about Linux but always complains about MS). Yeah right. The proof that the opposite is true is right under your nose but you refuse to believe it.
Every time Linux has a security hole, it’s somehow a proof of how Linux and open source has failed and how it’s “just as insecure as Windows”. But when Microsoft comes with yet another security advisory, nobody cares.
Fact: there are more Linux haters in this world than MS haters (“I want to see Linux fail”, “I tried Linux 8.0 and it sucks”, “FreeBSD is better than Linux”, “MacOS X has killed Linux on the desktop”, …). Every time you read OSNews and Slashdot.
I think I don’t have to continue, do I?
>All these Linux and Red Hat Linux apologists
>here just don’t see or don’t know how the system
>works regarding OSes and support. And what the
>companies expect from support.
RedHat is apparently only reducing support for their “Consumer Version.” Thus, the Advanced Server version should be getting your desired support levels.
And, because the software bases of Advanced Server and the Consumer Version overlap, I argue that the Consumer Version will be supported longer than you would think!?
>The whole notion of open source means that
>anyone can maintain the source code! Redhat
>creates the distro.
>WRONG. The financial company, or the curtain-making
>company is not a software company. But they do have
>computers utilizing operating systems. It is not
>their job to fix the software problems themselves or
>pay someone else to do it. When you buy the OS from >someone, you expect that company to support you. In
>any way. At least for 3-4 years.
>This comment of yours came after Timothy from Slashdot
>wrote exactly that in the front page of Slashdot. And
>he is wrong on that assesement, as you are. Companies
>don’t work that way, neither are so idealistic as you
>would like to think “we have the source, we can fix it >ourselves”.
Well, you are idealistic in other ways then I am.
The curtain company might not buy any OS at all. In fact, they might out source that job to someone else.
My idealistic attitude is: “the out sourcer who uses Linux will be able to deliver a better product since they *might* be quite capable of extending the distro, patching the distro, etc…” For example, I hate applying security fixes, but I know people who love to do that.
I agree. The era of companies doing IT themselves IS over. Open source will allow out sourcers to differentiate themselves by letting them make their own distros.
Yes. These companies might have to get Oracle and others to bless their changes, etc…
I once worked in a group at IBM that supported AIX. Their full time job was 1) building a distro, and 2) working out the upgrade incompatibilities of that distro. I know that customers want and need certain specializations.
I don’t apologize for Redhat or for anyone else. I am simply making the case from my own experience.
For example: with Microsoft’s WinXP Pro product, I wanted to change the way that the DHCP service works. Because of Microsoft’s “get lost, you’re an idiot” model, I was not able to do the “improvements” that I wanted to do.
I agree with you. A company cannot afford to take the time to change everything. They want a stable, unchanging environment. However, on occasion, I am sure that a company, a college student, or even a government employee would and could take the time to make a valuable improvement to the system. I know that businesses spend a lot of time implementing work-arounds. With Linux, they can spend *some* of this time on fixing the system!
Now, with the open source system, these changes can make their way back into one or more distrubtions.
Of course… the authors of a distribution have the power. They are the ones that decide what changes are made to their distributions.
In the end, I really don’t think that RedHat would do something that would make their distribution appear unstable because if they have get reputation, their product loses value.
The value add of Linux is that it is part of the “Open Source Community.” I hope and think that this association does add benefit to end users. I am sure that RedHat wants to remain a member in good standing.
Such a long post, and yet I don’t think you understood the most basic issue. And I’m not going to repeat it, many have already expressed it here. But this: RedHat is apparently only reducing support for their “Consumer Version.” Thus, the Advanced Server version should be getting your desired support levels.
Three years is the lifecycle for RHAS. That’s puny. Solaris is SOLD for at least 4.5 years, and the whole lifecycle is about 10 years!!
“Such a long post, and yet I don’t think you understood the most basic issue.”
I guess that my point was this: if you have the money, then you will be supported under either system.
Both Solaris and AIX 5L contain significant contributions from the open source communitee.
Thus, over the long term, open source products will have exceptional support.
“If you really need that much tech support on a dedicated application then your probably not using quality software, or your IT people are really stupid.”
I think that the point of the “system administrator” types on this list is that they expect quality software and if a problem is found, the want to be supported.
Corporate types, as you know, have escalation procedures that have to be gauranteed to execute.
My beef is: when I told Microsoft’s support team that I wanted to know what the root cause to my problem was, they more or less laughed at me and then told me to reformat and reinstall.
I agree with you, technical support isn’t all that it is cracked up to be.
That’s why I like open source. Everyone can access the source code. I believe that source code access should produce better support.
I guess that my point was this: if you have the money, then you will be supported under either system.
Let’s see what RH says: they say RHAS has a 3 year lifecycle. Once the (totally ridicolously short) lifecycle expires, would RH give support to BigCompany if BigCompany paid for each incident call $BIGNUMBER? RH certainly would, as long as $BIGNUMBER is big enough. But it would be also big enough for BigCompany to switch back to <supported OS that is not Linux>.
I think it’s simple, if you just enlarge your brain enough to accept that BigCompany does not have to necessarily stick with Linux.
Red Hat has replied here:
http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/01/28/2149203.shtml?tid=11
But this is a great example of the case that Red Hat does not support with their new scheme:
http://newsforge.com/comments.pl?sid=29030&cid=41287