In November 2003, Red Hat announced that “Red Hat will discontinue maintenance and errata support for Red Hat Linux 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, and 8.0 as of December 31, 2003.” In other words, “No more free Red Hat software.” Red Hat’s missive confirmed that it was going to focus its efforts on large, enterprise-wide Linux installations and suggested that Red Hat Linux users migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, albeit at a significantly increased annual cost. But then again, Fedora was unveiled.
Moving from Red Hat to Fedora
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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“No more free Red Hat software.”
Sorry buts thats just flat out wrong. Red Hat is now and according to them always will be a company based on Free OSS. Red Hat Enterprise Linux IS Free. Go to any Red Hat mirror you want and download the source. Or if you want it compiled use something Whitebox Linux. Make no mistake about it Red Hat is STILL very much a believer in Free and more importantly Open Software.
That “No more Free Software from Red Hat” line is BullSh*t since clearly they continue to be a company that puts out truly Free Software year after year.
I read this same article in a magazine 1 or 2 months ago
In other words, after purchasing Redhat Linux 9 Home or Professional versions retailing at $40 and $150 respectively, the end user is pushed into a corner of either purchasing new Redhat software or not being able to update their existing software. Either way it is observed is not a good business practice, in my opinion and numerous others it is bait and switch. This is one root cause of Linux struggling on the desktop in the present and the past. If you want to build a loyal base of existing consumers, keeping the end user happy and providing support is the key. It is very frustrating for a new user of Linux to learn then have the rug pulled out from underneath them. In conclusion, today’s fickle market is not the best place for experimenting with, because the customer is always right.
Since Jan 2003 the month I switched all servers and desktops to debian
“In other words, after purchasing Redhat Linux 9 Home or Professional versions retailing at $40 and $150 respectively, the end user is pushed into a corner of either purchasing new Redhat software or not being able to update their existing software.”
That is completely incorrect! End Users that have Red Hat 9 home or profesional have the choice to upgrade their desktop to Fedora Core. This makes it even easier for supporting the desktop because Fedora Core will be more updated. Plus with Red Had Desktop, gives the adavantage with the profesional users. There is no ‘bait and switch’ here. Just confusing FUD.
<p>“That “No more Free Software from Red Hat” line is BullSh*t since clearly they continue to be a company that puts out truly Free Software year after year.”</p>
<p>You have to understand that the context of “Free” that the author was using is not free in the sense of “Open”. Yes they give away the source but to the person who is used to getting the ISO’s from Redhat’s ftp server this does not mean free. Also if you were someone who believed in purchasing the OS from the vendor (as I always did on every release of RH) then the change from $40 a box to the price it is now (Intel x86 Standard $799) is not exactly a welcome change.</p>
<p>An analogy to be considered is that just because Ford decides to provide all the parts to their automobiles for free does not make the Mustang I build by hand free.</p>
<p>Honestly I am really getting sick of free software zeolots defending a shafty move by Redhat (shafty in that they decided to do one thing, only to rip that out from under people’s feet very quickly). If this was Sun or Microsoft people would have been in much more of an outrage. But because they continued to provide source (in my opinion only because of this because this is the only thing that seems to matter to these linux zeoalots) they get an easy pass. I totally think Redhat had the right to do what they did. They are a business, but if they were a company selling their software with a proprietary license, people would have been pissed. I was quite upset at the turn around because it offered very poor migration choices to those that use Redhat (mostly because it is always the supported version of Linux), but do not think a Free OS is worth spending thousands of dollars on. I am not going to run my enterprise on Fedora and I am not going to purchase RH Linux for scores of servers when Linux is a free os. So my choices are: move to Debian (not as supported but no risk of getting RedHatted) move to Solaris X86 (will cost more and probably be a step down in performance for a little while), move to Solaris Sparc (cost more but binary compat promise and 10 year minimum support per version) or finally to FreeBSD. I am not sure what I will do.</p>
It boils down to greed and not caring about the small customers who purchased Redhat 9 home-professional.
They could careless if they are angry or not, they got their money and now they don’t care.
This is clearly a “delayed online for several months so that the dead tree eversion can be sold” article. What’s worse is that the delay has completely and totally obsoleted the review since Fedora Core 2 is now out of course and comes with its own new set of “foibles” (but I do have Nvidia 3D graphics now – hooray! I did completely replace the kernel though…).
Even if you consider that the article was probably submitted to the dead tree magazine editors in mid-January, that’s still probably at least two months too late really (FC1 has been out since 5th November last year). This is exactly why dead tree Linux magazines are mostly useless (even the CDs/DVDs they put on their front cover are often obsolete by the time they hit the newsstands!).
You have to understand that the context of “Free” that the author was using is not free in the sense of “Open”. Yes they give away the source but to the person who is used to getting the ISO’s from Redhat’s ftp server this does not mean free. Also if you were someone who believed in purchasing the OS from the vendor (as I always did on every release of RH) then the change from $40 a box to the price it is now (Intel x86 Standard $799) is not exactly a welcome change.
What are you trying to say? What is your definition of Free and how is RedHat not compliant with your definition of Free.
As far as I can tell, RedHat is a commercial entity, and as such is tasked by its BoD and investors to make money. That said, the only thing that I know they charge for is service. All the changes they’ve made to their software have been contributed back to the public at no charge and people can do whatever they want with it.
If all you want are RedHat or Fedora CDs (without support from RedHat), browse to http://www.distrowatch.com and they’ll point you to OSDisc.com which sells the CDs online.
If you think RedHat’s support contracts are too expensive, then that’s about the only valid complain that would make sense to me.
It boils down to greed and not caring about the small customers who purchased Redhat 9 home-professional.
They could careless if they are angry or not, they got their money and now they don’t care.
Would you kindly support your statements, sir? If that’s too vague, could you answer these two questions:
1) What makes you say that RedHat doesn’t care? Where does it say that they don’t care if customers are angry or not?
2) What exactly did RedHat do wrong by their customers? Was it a breach of contract? Did they not provide the service that they advertised they would? DId they somehow pull the rug out from underneath people?
I would just like to understand the mentality behind RedHat nay-sayers.
But I cannot under any influence honestly say that it’s possible to “upgrade” from Red Hat to Fedora. For all of my long time issues with Red Hat, it was a fairly decent (if bloated) distribution, and Fedora seems constantly broken.
If Red Hat’s your thing, and you have real work to do with you computers, then going to RHEL is your best way to go. If you need free software, then you could always go with White Box Enterprise Linux. It’s the same code as RHEL, but stripped of the logos etc.
“What are you trying to say? What is your definition of Free and how is RedHat not compliant with your definition of Free.”
My concept of free in this situation is zero cost of goods. Redhat is not providing Redhat Linux at zero cost of good anymore. I brought it up because the person I was quoted seemed to only be considering the definition of “free” as being without bounds or restrictions. Redhat is offering their contributed work of Linux without bounds or restrictions (in the form of downloadable source) but is not longer providing the product RedHat linux at no cost of good. To many people (perhaps most) and including me, this is not free. Certainly, my point is that there is a distinction between the two different types of free that the poster I quoted was not considering.
“As far as I can tell, RedHat is a commercial entity, and as such is tasked by its BoD and investors to make money. That said, the only thing that I know they charge for is service. All the changes they’ve made to their software have been contributed back to the public at no charge and people can do whatever they want with it.”
How is it ok for m$ to make money but for red hat to do it, its wrong? people whine!
A company that steels, cheats lies and puts out usless crap and m$ fan boys out there rant, saying that ‘m$ is a company.’
Well so is Red Hat and guess what it actualy produces a GOOD os that is stable, secure and isn’t full of bloat!
So if a crooked company that has a half ass of a product like Micro$oft can make money then so can Red Hat!
But I cannot under any influence honestly say that it’s possible to “upgrade” from Red Hat to Fedora. For all of my long time issues with Red Hat, it was a fairly decent (if bloated) distribution, and Fedora seems constantly broken.
I’ve upgraded from Red Hat 9 to Fedora Core one. I used the CD’s for the initial upgrade and downloaded any patches I needed with apt-get. I’ve never had an issue with ‘bloat’ or ‘broken’ software.
However try upgrading from Win2k to Win2k3 or XP! you’ll find a whole host of problems! dll hell being one of them.
Of course each has their own experiance so I will take it as a grain of salt.
“If you need free software, then you could always go with White Box Enterprise Linux. It’s the same code as RHEL, but stripped of the logos etc.”
i suggest you go with caos instead of whitebox. whitebox is a single guy while caos and taolinux have multiple people involved. thats more safety from abandonware but it should be pretty easy to go from one redhat enterprise clone to another
fedora is really good for people who want to stay on the bleeding edge. fc 1 to fc 2 was a major jump in many ways. i believe that the next couple of releases would be far more stable and interesting.(not just the software)