“Finally I think there needs to be a public call to Red Hat to provide critical security updates for Red Hat 7.x, 8.0 and 9. While I realize that this will not create any revenue for Red Hat, quite the opposite, it will reduce short and medium term revenues as customers will continue using “free” products”. Read the article at the Security-Site by Kurt Seifried.
Red Hat Linux End of Life & the Options Available for SysAdmins
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Okay, if your a system admin, you should be running RH9 that’s patched, you can either upgrade to fedora or you can buy one of their enterprise products, it’s that simple. Redhat 7.0 was the first distro I ran and I am thankful that RH provided it.
I have wanted to read this article, but i tire of dragging my bottom scroll bar because this website does not fit in my laptop’s 1024×768 resolution.
Red Hat shouldnt complain about their short/med term revenue. Tough for them. They put a lot of admins in a tough crunch with their choice to cut support. Some bugets are tight and they cant afford to upgrade just yet. This will buy time until new bugets get created for the new year.
Red Hat made a choice to drop their support and produce fedora with is fine. However they have no reason to complain either.
Red Hat does not owe anyone anything.
Red Hat is not obligated to sacrifice anything, just for the benefit of others.
The only thing that Red Hat should be doing is making a product that is worth money for customer to purchase. End of story.
Socialists, public “do good-ers”, and all those that expect something for nothing, go to hell.
Dump Redhat and install another distribution such as Debian.
RedHat is going to take a big hit in both the minds of the public and the people who support their systems.
1) RHCE people who were certified a little over a year ago aren’t certified for enterprise. The RHCE is barely catching up. If Microsoft dropped MCSE 2000 in 2002, they would get flamed up the ass, I expect the same will eventually catch up with RedHat.
2) People learned the RedHat System as home users, and then used it or recommended it at work. The free distro was a means for getting RedHat Enterprise into the corporate environment. That entire path is now down the drain, I imagine more SuSE or Mandrake or Debian will fill the space.
3) RedHat is setting themselves to look worse than Microsoft. Once a major worm gets around and owns a shitload of RH boxes, RedHat will be blamed, once again fucking with their mindshare.
I thought that an offshoot of the Fedora Community project was going to take up supplying critical updates to RH9
I seem to remember reading this somewhere. I’m sure someone can tell me this is or isn’t true?
Its not commercial support, but then I don’t know of any consumer OS that has worthwhile commercial support. Generally you have to be smart and search the net.
It isn’t as if a lot of the Redhat employee’s currently making redhat are not going to be involved in fedora, after all they plan on using that as their testbed don’t they?
Added to that is the fact there aint enough RH boxes worldwide to compare to the windows nightmare, maybe in a few years…
Socialists, public “do good-ers”, and all those that expect something for nothing, go to hell.
Err, RH would be out of a product if they did, considering the kernal, DE and most off the apps are written by “>Socialists, public ‘do good-ers'”.
“Err, RH would be out of a product if they did, considering the kernal, DE and most off the apps are written by ‘Socialists, public ‘do good-ers’.”
Red Hat does not owe anyone anything. Those of you who feel entitled to something, get a clue. This is business. Red Hat invests a lot of work into creating a product, and they expect people to pay money for it. This is the way of capitalism. If you don’t like it, move to Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, or China, where you’ll be sure to get your daily “rice bowl” rations.
It’s not Red Hat’s problem if sysadmins are going to be troubled by the upcoming EOL for security/bug patches. Why should Red Hat sacrifice their time and money by providing a service free? If all you have for your answer is some notions about the “public good” or the “goodwill of the community”, then your point stands on unreasonable grounds. Since when does making a product, and then selling it to make money, require a sacrifice to the “public good” or the “community”? It never has, and it never will. If you don’t like the product, then don’t buy it. If you think the price of the product is higher than it’s value, then don’t buy it. Otherwise, shut up and quit the socialist, do good-er, “community” crapola.
I have wanted to read this article, but i tire of dragging my bottom scroll bar because this website does not fit in my laptop’s 1024×768 resolution
I gave up too, could be interesting but…
____________________________
This is business. Red Hat invests a lot of work into creating a product, and they expect people to pay money for it.
RedHat might give a final support for plenty of production systems, otherwise they will gain a bad reputation with the sysadmins that are going to be troubled by the end of life…
They invested a lot of money packaging software and a kernel they didn’t program by themselves and now (enter capitalism) YOU pay for it. They should cease to talk about Open Source at all.
“RedHat might give a final support for plenty of production systems, otherwise they will gain a bad reputation with the sysadmins that are going to be troubled by the end of life…”
Who cares about a bad reputation that is based on unreasonableness? I mean, if you are a sysadmin and you somehow think that Red Hat *owes* you something for nothing, then why the hell should Red Hat care about that? The only “public opinion” that matters is (A) Does Red Hat have a good product and (B) Is the price worth the value.
“They invested a lot of money packaging software and a kernel they didn’t program by themselves and now (enter capitalism) YOU pay for it. They should cease to talk about Open Source at all.”
They did invest a lot of time and money developing the kernel, and Gnome, and Mozilla, and a host of other programs. Red Hat is *their* distribution, regardless of how many other people freely contributed to the source base. It takes a lot of work to build a *good* distribution, regardless of the fact that it’s based on open source. Their only reward for this hard work is to sell the product for money. If you don’t want to buy it fine. But damnit, stop asking for stuff for free, and stop demanding that Red Hat *owes* you something, or that Red Hat must sacrifice something for absolutely no return benefit!
Redhat might not owe me anything, but a company with a support policy which changes so drastically from day to day won’t get any money from me or the company I work for.
No, they don’t *have* to supply updates for their products. But I think they are doing themselves a rather big disfavour by cutting off people who previously have relied on them.
Redhat’s policy up to now has been to support at least one older major version than the current stable. Which means they would still have to support RH9. This is a policy change which makes me very wary of the company and their entire customer relations.
Personally, I will stop recommending Redhat at work completely and use something else.
As for your communist witch hunting: how about giving it a rest? It’s old already.
“Redhat might not owe me anything, but a company with a support policy which changes so drastically from day to day won’t get any money from me or the company I work for.”
Has their support policy changed drastically from day to day? No, it hasn’t. The support policy for each version of Red Hat has been stated clearly up front, and has never changed.
“No, they don’t *have* to supply updates for their products. But I think they are doing themselves a rather big disfavour by cutting off people who previously have relied on them.”
Did they every make a promise to supply free updates for their products? No, they never made that promise. So, why did you expect something that was never promised? If you run your business based on unreasonable assumptions, it’s your fault, not the fault of Red Hat.
“Redhat’s policy up to now has been to support at least one older major version than the current stable. Which means they would still have to support RH9. This is a policy change which makes me very wary of the company and their entire customer relations.”
Can you provide a quote that states this policy? Or, are you just going on your impression, which is based on a factually untrue assumption?
“Personally, I will stop recommending Redhat at work completely and use something else.”
If you want a support contract, buy it. Red Hat is not going to renig on a purchased support contract, so what is your problem here? Your problem is that you had an unreasonable expectation for Red Hat to provide a free service that would benefit you, but that would be nothing but a sacrifice for Red Hat.
“As for your communist witch hunting: how about giving it a rest? It’s old already.”
If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck…
Perhaps some of you should examine the nature of your beliefs on this matter.
Concerning your statement that sysadmin could go to fedora, have you looked at fedoras “life time”? A new release every 3-4 months, and EOL shortly after the next release…
progeny just said they will produce updates via red carpet for Redhat 7.2 and .3 I believe for $5/month.
http://www.progeny.com
Now, RedHat cannot be faulted for stopping support because A. Fedora will upgrade RH9, B. They Announced this in advance and C. they have given much to the community.
However, Redhat may not be making the best decision. They no longer can make money off of the low end products. They also appear to be leaving some people high and dry. The reason is there maybe some software that is tested for for 6.x and 7.x, but for some reason has problems with 8 or 9 or Fedora. The other problem is it is not exactly practical to upgrade every year. Especially if you have a large network either servers or workstations. Redhat looks bad because how hard is it to make an rpm out of a new package when the projects are doing most of the work? On the other hand, if this isn’t too hard, then we can do it ourselves.
Bottom line is, Redhat isn’t really doing anything wrong, but they aren’t making any friends here.
http://security-site.seifried.org/print.pl?sid=03/12/03/0954243
this link is OK 😉
I do not mind if they drop rhn for the 7.x 8.0 an9 systems not at all but it would be nice to leave some security patches at the ftp site like kernel fixes and so on.
So people can download and install them as needed.
In my opinion it is a bad move to totaly abandon support for the 7, 8 and 9 versions.
I know some people who have several servers with RH 7 and 8 used as a Server like www, mail ftp and so on they all need to go to another distro or BSD.
It is generating a lot of time and frustration.
Also if you finally had your management confinced about the good things open source can bring your company, and you did choose RedHat, no open source will enter that building again.
Just my 2 cents
Okay how many more years would you like them to support 7.x? 3? maybe 4 more years? please point me to any commercial OS that does updates for 7 years would you. 6 years ago I bought a monster of a system it was a pentium 233 and 64mb ram! That was top of the line then. The point being 7 yrs is a looooong time in the computing world.
Redhat had to do something to get people to buy its products but didn’t want to resort to SuSe type of tactics with closed tools and only i386 iso’s, live cd’s, etc.
RHEL is expensive so I am not buying it for home. I can’t. but in MY opnion redhat makes the best product so I’ve moved to Fedora without complaint. Other than the few boxes i’ve bought over the years I’ve been a leech like most, but unlike most I don’t complain about what I get for free. If redhat is the best product in your opnion (which it must have been if you used it) then either pay for it, move to fedora, or switch to a lesser product that will do what you want. It’s not so hard. its put up or shut up time so stop talking and DO something so we can all move on.
Ah, you hit the nail right on the head. RedHat was slowly but surely being crushed under the weight of backporting patches to 6 different distributions (7.X, 8, 9), each with their own version of Apache, sendmail, etc. This is NOT maintainable over the long term. So, they now have a slower-moving target, RHEL 3, that doesn’t come out every 6 months, so they don’t have to constantly patch old distributions.
Let me clue some of you in: if Oracle has the choice between supporting SuSE, which drops binary compat every year, and RHEL 3, which is supported for five years, _Oracle_ is going to choose RHEL3, since it’s a stable target that won’t require them to constantly make new versions. SuSE might be fine for your three servers, but it’s just not going to work for serious (50+ server) enterprise environments.
People also leave out RHN from the value equation, which has some fantastic web-based tools for updating systems remotely. Forget the cron jobs – you can deploy a patched RPM to one system from the web, test it, and if it works, you can just click a few check boxes and deploy it to everyone. THAT is flexibility, and it’s worth paying for, IMHO.
Microsoft makes people pay $200 for the retail version of WindowsXP Home, yet I’ve never heard anyone whine that it’s too much.
-Erwos
Dear Ump45,
Thanks for putting people in their place and telling it like it is. I wish the OSS community had more sane people like you.
This whole “Red Hat owes me X” mindset disgusts me. Red Hat has done more for OSS and Linux than ANY other company or distro out there. I have to laugh when people try to paint things otherwise such that Red Hat is “leeching”, LOL. No it is the users who are leeching off of them. If Red Hat was just “packaging up some rpms” I’d like to see someone invent Kudzu, anaconda, and their excellant admin tools which are so good that Gnome has adopted them as their official configuratoin tools. Then package it all up and give it away for free for a 10 years.
It’s sad that their reward for a decade of hard work and giving people quality Free products is to be stabbed in the back by Linux users. Just goes to show most Linux users are finicky,unloyal,vindictive, and truly nasty and will turn on ANYONE on a dime if they stop getting things for Free.
The ultimate irony if of course that Red Hat is STILL giving away arguable one of the best Linux distros in Fedora. Like it or Lump its STILL a free Linux distro made by Red Hat and supported by them FOR FREE. Put that in your pipe and smoke it leechers.
“red hat does not owe anyone anything”
too true. but, remember, we don’t owe a goddamn thing to them either. if they think it’s a “clever” business model to axe their free standard distro (i bought boxed sets of 5.1, 6.2, 7.3 and 8 to support them) then they will just have to deal with the fact that when my company finally ponies up the bucks for an “enterprise” linux, it will *NOT* be red hat.
i owe them nothing. and from now on they will be getting what they are owed.
RedHat might give a final support for plenty of production systems, otherwise they will gain a bad reputation with the sysadmins that are going to be troubled by the end of life…
Only from the sysadmins who think Redhat are, for some reason, obligated to give away all their work to them for free.
They invested a lot of money packaging software and a kernel they didn’t program by themselves and now (enter capitalism) YOU pay for it.
They also do a lot of development on that software they package and – where the GPL doesn’t force them to open up their code – often GPL it as well.
They should cease to talk about Open Source at all.
Why ? All their modifications to GPLed code are returned. The source code to their Enterprise products is free for _anyone_ to acquire – even though the GPL doesn’t require that. You can use it to build RHEL from scratch and install that if you want. Heck, you can even copy someone else’s RHEL and use it.
The only things you don’t get *for free* from Redhat are a) ISOs (or other binary distributions) and b) product support.
If they don’t charge for something, how are they supposed to be in business ? Redhat are doing an excellent job of supporting open source *and* actually making money.
The only things you don’t get *for free* from Redhat are a) ISOs (or other binary distributions) and b) product support.
Looks like no person has a clear perspective about what was being discussed.
Besides passions and nationalisms there is the problem of abrupted end-of-line for products that were choosed by plenty of OSS adopters. This adopters might have choosen RedHat. It’s only understandable that this systems will keep on producing after they were setup and deployed. Now the product company say: we are not going to supply security updates anymore and support for this versions has stoped, if you want to keep using it with a peacefull mind buy the RHEL for $1900.
If I were a customer (I am not) I would think:
“Why do I have to buy that (RHEL) (or I don’t think it is worth that many dollars) I want to use what I have and if there are open issues with what I have that’s not my fault, that’s the vendor fault and they should keep on explaining/supporting how to solve this open issues that were found.”
The source code to their Enterprise products is free for _anyone_ to acquire – even though the GPL doesn’t require that. You can use it to build RHEL from scratch and install that if you want.
It doesn’t work that way ! You have to get the ttad,arks and simbols of RedHat away before use it commercialy. See this:
http://whiteboxlinux.org/index.html
<quote0>
A fair amount of effort has gone into removing Red Hat’s trademarks and logos. Should you find one remaining, please report it so that it can be removed. Write me about this and any other problems at [email protected]. Or join the devel list and dive in!
</quote0>
Have it your way. I owe nothing to RadHat (or anybody else).
From a real life example (in the whiteboxlinux.org index page):
<quote1>
White Box Linux’s initial creation has been sponsored by the Beauregard Parish Public Library in DeRidder, LA USA out of self interest. We have several servers and over fifty workstations running Red Hat Linux and were left high and dry by their recent shift in business plan. Our choices were a difficult migration to another distribution or paying RedHat an annual fee greater than the amortized value of our hardware. So we chose a third path, made possible by the power of Open Source…. White Box Linux.
</quote1>
Looks like no person has a clear perspective about what was being discussed.
People grounded in reality shouldn’t have too much trouble. The free ride was not going to last forever.
Besides passions and nationalisms there is the problem of abrupted end-of-line for products that were choosed by plenty of OSS adopters. This adopters might have choosen RedHat. It’s only understandable that this systems will keep on producing after they were setup and deployed. Now the product company say: we are not going to supply security updates anymore and support for this versions has stoped, if you want to keep using it with a peacefull mind buy the RHEL for $1900.
In what currency are you measuring ? In US$, RHEL WS starts at $180, RHEL ES starts at $350 and RHEL AS starts at $1400. Most people will only need WS or ES, and if they are in environments that really need the things Premium subscriptions or RHEL AS provide, then the extra cost is pocket change.
If I were a customer (I am not) I would think: […]
Whereas rational people are either thinking “for what we get, it’s still pretty cheap” or “no problems, Fedora or $DISTRIBUTION can do the stuff I want to do just as well”.
You will be able to get RH <9 updates until the end of the year from Redhat. After that, other vendors will provide updates to the OSes for a small cost. RH9 will be supported for another six months, after which third parties will step in again.
There are three basic types of user that this will affect.
* Home hobbyists – no problems, switch to Fedora or some other distribution and your situation hasn’t changed.
* Low-end professional platforms – If you’re running your shop properly, this is *at worst* a minor accounting problem.
* Enterprise users – If you’re running an enterprise on the free versions of Redhat then you’re an idiot and deserve all the grief you get.
It doesn’t work that way ! You have to get the ttad,arks and simbols of RedHat away before use it commercialy.
Only if you want to sell it.
Have it your way. I owe nothing to RadHat (or anybody else).
Throwing a tanty because you’re no longer getting a free ride isn’t going to win you any friends.
I thought the whole point of Open Source is that you can maintain the code yourself. If you need a security update, just do it yourself. Wasn’t that the whole point of everyone abandoning Microsoft? So that the user can have ‘control’ over the code? So what’s the beef with Red Hat? That they won’t do it for you, for free? I’m confused…
I thought the whole point of Open Source is that you can maintain the code yourself.
Not the whole point, but one of the main ones.
Many (probably most) people are just freeloading though.
So what’s the beef with Red Hat? That they won’t do it for you, for free?
Bingo.
Check out http://www.whiteboxlinux.org This is a project that will build a redistributable version of linux using the source RPMs from RedHat 3 AS. They are also building binaries of all released errata and other updates. They currently have an RC2 available that I have installed on 3 machines for testing.
First chance I get, I will be migrating our RH 7.0 servers to FreeBSD. Many are not happy with what Red Hat did – they gave their users a bigger bird than Microsoft. So, we’re birding Red Hat (and Microsoft) back.