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Red Hat Announces Product EOL Calendar
BrunoC writes "Looks like Red Hat is getting a little Microsoftish and is quietly introducing its brand new 12-month-only Errata. Quoting The Reg: 'Red Hat's current death list EOLs RH 7.1-8.0 at the end of this year, while 6.2 and 7.0 get theirs as of the end of March.' You can read the whole article here." I don't see how this is "Microsoftish" -- the code Red Hat creates or includes is still GPL, and you can pay anyone willing to fix it. They're not required to support it forever :)
They are a company afterall. You can't expect them to support all their products for an indefinite amount of time. They would go bankrupt!
seeing that i really enjoy using the most archaic versions of redhat i can get my dirty little hands on. i mean, i see how they are of some use, but i dont understand while people are getting antsy and making m$ related accusations...
xao
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
Pardon me, but if using short product support policies is "microsoftish", then Redhat is more microsoftish than Microsoft itself. Last time I checked, support for Windows 95 was dropped on December 31 and support for Win2000 will be dropped in 2008. That's 8 YEARS per product with a possibility of extening support for corporate customers.
I do not recall Redhat supporting any of their distro releases for 8 years.
Yet this is the very thing that Microsoft has been vilified for to no end in the past. Are we having short-term memory problems now?
Since Slashdot's search tool is pretty much unusable I couldn't find the article, but there was one a few months ago about how evil Microsoft was for announcing support cutoff dates for for Win95, 98/ME, NT4 and W2K.
It isn't like anyone was paying for their distros anyway.
The whole concept behind Open Source is that selling service is the way to make money. However, when no one is paying you and demanding your services even still, there's got to come a point where you realize that your "customers" are simply taking advantage of you.
Bravo, Redhat. For finally realizing that money doesn't come from beggars. Now maybe my RHAT shares will be a shit.
I have been pwned because my
Here is an example of the rapid advancement expected when utilizing open source development. Proprietary users will think "Retiring a major OS in just a year? That's crazy" - while we Linux users have grown accustomed to such things.
Um, seriously. End-of-lifing a product is just a plain good idea, whether you're talking about open source, closed source, or something that isn't even computer software. In the real world, it costs way too much to keep a support infrastructure in place for a product that is only being used by a small amount of the population due to its having become "obsolete" (even if only as a marketing matter). While it sucks to be one of the people who still uses the product and doesn't want to upgrade, there's really no alternative but to cut people off eventually.
One of the virtues of free software is its rapid development/update cycle. Why would should a company based on this development model sell software as if it were never updated?
I don't see how this is "Microsoftish"
Maybe that's because you don't have to admin anything important. An annual upgrade treadmill is a huge burden on IT staffs that have to prototype and test rollouts for upgrades. There is a reasonable support timeframe between zero and indefinite and one year is not it.
Since three years warranty on server hardware seems to be not uncommon, possibly this is the thin air Redhat seem to have plucked this number from?
It's nice to know that when you get your shiny new 8-way Xeon with untold amounts of RAM you'll be able to leave it in production for the span of its warranty without having to worry about re-installing due to the OS release on it being EOL'ed.
Where this falls down is twofold: 1) servers are still useful well past three years, whether they're warrantied or not, and 2) some vendors for extra money will extend warranties up to five or so years (my employer has started buying Dell boxes with five year warranties pretty much as standard).
Come on, Timothy, that was cheap :-) Of course it's "Microsoft-ish" because it forces companies who want support to upgrade. Yeah, sure, you still have the source code, but in a company that doesn't mean anything if you're not getting support. Half the reason why Red Hat is so popular (over the "free beer" Linuxes like Debian) is because when a company puts it on their systems, they can be assured of getting professional support. This is really important for the PHBs of the world - they don't want to hire some in-house hacker with tattoos and spikey hair to "support" their installation.
Of course, even though it is Microsoft-ish, i don't think that's a bad thing. Forcing your clients to upgrade is better all round - it's better for the economy because it's creating sales which lead to more R&D spending, plus you can ensure your clients are running the latest version which should cut down on the bugginess or flakiness of their software. If Microsoft had had a more aggressive "push upgrades onto the client" scheme, all the internet problems we saw last week wouldn't've happened, because everyone would've been running patched SQL Servers anyway.
I got a sig so you would remember me.
Maybe the word 'quietly' is what's microsoftish. But actually Microsoft is quite vocal about end-of-life announcements hoping to spur new sales of the latest product suites. Actually, the poster really should reference Oracle, whom is the master of desupport notices; often on the order of 'this product will self-destruct in ten..nine..'.
I guess Red Hat is being microsoftish by trying to make a profit (maybe someday), or trying to keep the majority of it's users somewhere in the middle of the bell-curve (you spend 90% of your time supporting 10% of your users who refuse to upgrade), or maybe it's the windowsupdate.com like ability to patch over the web.
I think they're more Microsoftish than you may think, and I say 'right on!'.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
One of the major reasons to choose RedHat is their reliability. Thouroughly tested software you can rely to have on your server for at least a year without having to worry about it except for bug- and securityfixes.
Ok, 7.1 is rather old, but discontinuing support for 8.0?
IMO professional distros should always support their latest, and their last major release, so in RedHats case 8.x and 7.3, and not drop support for 7.3 until 9.0 is out.
After all, support is, like, the thing theiy make money in the first place!
my
The thing that comes to mind was the discussion the BMW exec had with a number of attendess at a tech conference. He point out that they are required to support cars with parts, etc for Ten Years. And the obvious question was how may people there were running things that were ten yerars old, nevermind able to get support for it.
Now we get to End of Life issues. How long should software be supported? Ten years for something like software, Is this even reasonable? It's important for the embedded market, at least.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I think that one of the major beefs against Microsoft is that they require you to PAY to upgrade to the latest version. I don't see that dropping errata support for something that will cost you a grand total of $0 (if you have fast net access) or a few bucks to get new discs from one of the cheapbytes-type places out there.
Personally, I'd rather see them drop the old support in favor of providing a higher level of service to the paying customers. (This isn't a dig on their service, which I think is great - we're paying customers at work, and RHN is a tremendous tool.)
It becomes microsoftish when an upgrade is not a free download away.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
"I don't see how this is "Microsoftish" -- the code Red Hat creates or includes is still GPL, and you can pay anyone willing to fix it. They're not required to support it forever :)"
But isn't that what you're paying RedHat for when you buy support from RedHat? By cutting their support, they're cutting the one service that paying customers actually want (unless they buy the software as a donation). MS just patched NT4, which has been out since '95 or so, and you're criticizing MS and excusing RedHat. Give me a break.
Vote for Pedro
I don't see how this is "Microsoftish" -- the code Red Hat creates or includes is still GPL, and you can pay anyone willing to fix it. They're not required to support it forever :)
This is editorial, and it is also wrong. Paying people to fix software that is perceived to be 'out of date' just isn't done in the Open Source world.
What's forgotten here is that supporting old versions of software (let's say, Gnome 1.0 vs. Gnome 2.0) and fixing its bugs essentially requires forking the code to do it. You have to have a programmer familiar with the Gnome code, who understands how a 2.0 bug relates to 1.2, fixes it, tests it, and deploys.
Oh, come on, who's going to bother?
Particularly when a bug might be, say, a broken Redhat proprietary script that IS fixed in a later version of Redhat Linux? You can fix it for yourself, and even have it paid for, but nobody else is going to care. You'll even have to have a distribution site, if you want anybody but yourself to reap the benefits. Imagine it: 'Kudzu-for-Redhat-6.3-fixes' on Sourceforge.
I have yet to see a company jumping all over a support model for Redhat 5.x. The fact is, Linux is moving too fast for EOL-ed (even by Redhat Standards) products to be meaningful. The big players like IBM (that drive revenue for distribution companies) want to use the newest Linux features and bugfixes, not waste their time with old versions' bugs.
This argument about old GPL software still being 'supportable' only holds water if you build from source and put newer versions of software on a box. And at that, you get support from the program maintainer at best, not the distributor. At that point, who cares WHAT version of Linux you're using? If you're not using, say, the convenience of prepackaged bugfix RPMs, you're just doing generic Linux and gaining nothing from the convenience of packaging.
When I see, seriously, a company that will support and put liability on the line for 5.x Redhat Linux, I'll believe you. But just saying 'you can pay for support' implies that 1) there are people out there with enough knowledge of the older code to bother, and 2) they're not telling you to upgrade anyway, since it's a collective waste of time in their minds.
Yeah, as the product responsible for Linux I can sure see myself explaining this to my boss (who is very pro-free software): Er, yeah mate. We just hire a bunch of hippies if Red Hat support runs out on the server products we run. I'm sure Oracle will be more then happy to support our home modified kernel sources. Sure a great career move on my side.
Sorry, this is just plain dumb and makes me wonder if Red Hat indeed is a good choice for this company. We are talking of a major divison of one of the biggest logistics companies worldwide.
A one year time frame is just plain unacceptable in a corporate environment.
I think it very much depends how Red Hat handles this on their enterprise level support contracts.
(I read the part about the three year life cycle for their "advanced server" products. Which ,imo are just a scam in the first place).
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Different things.
MS requiring an upgrade is forced because no one else can support or fix bugs or security issues on old Windows or MS-DOS versions.
Red Hat is just stopping their own support for old versions, but anyone else can fix their bugs or security issues, and support it, because they have the source code to it.
No one's forcing an upgrade on Red Hat's half.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
I agree with your post. Honestly, I don't generally like much that MS does on the business side, but product support is one that seems _fairly_ reasonable (at least in the OS realm). Really, '95 support just expired...that's a long time to support a piece of junk.
.spec file. Upgrade yourself, or even better, setup your own local RHN server to roll them out for you. You don't have to patch things like Evolution (not installed on your servers anyway, right??) on a server, just the security related errata!
I also don't think that a year is unreasonable for RedHat to support an OS for...especially considering we're talking about Open Source products here. Really, RHN/up2date is nice, but not a necessary component.
There are two things to consider here.
1) Home users: who cares if they have to D/L a new ISO every 12 months...sure, it'll cut into the pr0n allowance, but no biggie (sorry dial-up users, you'll have to shell out $5+shipping for a disc).
2) Corporate users: upgrading servers is a pain. It's done as little as possible. Open Source is great in this situation. Upgrade on a package by package basis. It's fairly easy to build an RPM...especially when a lot of projects include the
And to top it off, corporations should be using Advanced Server anyway, or have the $$ to pay RedHat for some on-the-side support deal...this happens all the time.
Even a non-RedHat supported RedHat is still a very maintainable system.
-Ben
Actually, they're cutting services for the only people who do actually pay for something. Very bad for business.
Vote for Pedro
and you can pay anyone willing to fix it. They're not required to support it forever :)
Since the code is otherwise free, service is the *only* thing you're paying for - it should be top notch.
Way back in December LWN covered this and I think Alan Cox voiced his thought that people (not RedHat) may try and make a business out of support 6.2. Now there's an idea...
RH8.1 isn't even out and they are announcing an EoL for 8.0? What kind of crack are these guys smoking?
It would be awfully nice if they would have something to upgrade TO before planning the end of support for the current line.
Considering that the "autoupdate" stuff in RH doesn't work very well, most upgrades require either backing out current data and rebuilding, or making a new server and moving the data over. This requires hardware and expensive man-hours. So much for that low total-cost-of-ownership that linux is supposed to provide.
You know, you are SO wrong. Ofc. the beggars(Students, the primary slashdot crowd, etc.) will not mind they now have to upgrade to get supported versions, they do that each other week because they don't have anything else meaningfull to do.
But, in the real world, you just don't upgrade each week. First of all, you don't have the time to do it, second many of your services are so complicated they might break seriously if a patch is applied, and ofc. all of this has to be done on a working live system in a very narrow timeframe, which leaves you very little time for errors.
This is a very poor move, now that Linux has been accepted in the business world. This will clearly throw some people back to Windows, because their lifetime is bigger, and the systems are easier to update. Not that I don't know how to use the patch command, but hey, most people would like just to double-click on SP3 and then wait until it is done.
-H
I know some sites are still running Solaris 5.2 (which was de-emphasised about 5 years ago). It takes some companies almost a year to get their software really stable. Forcing them to replace their OS on a yearly basis is going to discourage movement to redhat
From a marketing (as well as technical) point of view, theis seem s like a really bad idea(tm).
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
I have one. Windows XP.
I don't have to pay $800/year for Windows XP for every desktop install of it. It seems my choice for Redhat on the desktop is either AS at $800/year for three years of support, or the "consumer" version for a one year support cycle.
You state that they are the MS of Linux like someone came down from on high and pronounced it for all to see. Last I checked, I couldn't:
1) download an absolutely free (as in speech, as in beer) operating system
2) sign up for automatic update-checking (without signing a privacy-undermining EULA)
3) download ANY software that goes into said OS, often in multiple versions, including cvs and beta
4) get all the code to any of the above to hack on if I want to
with Microsoft.
Just because they are the largest GNU/Linux company, and the most widely-known, doesn't equate them a priori with Microsoft.
B
ps-- That Aaa aaa BBB thing makes more sense to me... All A's should come before any B's.
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
I think you missed the main thrust of the point that was being made.
If Microsoft stops supporting something then it will never be supported by anyone. No bug fixes, nothing. If RedHat stops supporting something then there is nothing to stop you from paying someone to pick up where RedHat left off. Hell someone might even find a viable bisiness model here by servicing old RedHat distros (OldHat?)
I've still got one box purring away with 5.2, another running 7.0 and the rest of my boxen at 7.3. All happy clams running what they're capable of with no issues. I can still build packages from source or snag available RPMs for any critical security or bug fixes. It's not like Red Hat's preventing me from doing that. They're just trying to manage their customer support model and remain profitable. Good for them!
I suspect that's why they are releasing Advanced Workstation
Real businesses, with thousands of servers, can not upgrade every year. Besides the actual time to do the work of upgrading, there is testing that must be done when you have real money at stake, downtime caused by the upgrade, etc.
I work for a real company. I can't use an unsupported operating system. I can't upgrade every machine every year. I can't even upgrade to the latest and greatest (e.g. RedHat 8 and Solaris 9 are out of the question), because it is too untested. These are the business realities, not factors that I or any other individual have control over. A single incident (e.g. a server crashes and whatever sort of failover is in place does not work) can cost more money than my yearly salary. A single hiccup (e.g. a 1 second network outage for a single machine) can cost more than my paycheck.
Sun at least makes guarantees that binaries that worked on previous versions of Solaris will work on new versions. (If they pass a test suite). RedHat makes no such guarantee.
I thought I was making real progress to replacing Solaris servers with Linux servers. But with this announcement, I don't know what to do. If I deploy RedHat, I am adding a substantial (and mostly hidden) cost and risk. RedHat seemed like the logical choice, but my next course of action is going to be to investigate alternate supported Linux distros (IBM, Sun).
You can't? Just guessing here, but I bet you use linux in your dormroom or your bedroom.
In April, a co-worker and I upgraded roughly 15-20 machines from RH 6.1 to RH 7.2. We don't have IT staff as such, we are both scientists in academia who happen to know a fair bit about system admin. We work in an academic environment.
Our 15-20 machines are all slightly different. They all needed to have certain config files backed up and restored. They each have a different person with different skills and different requirements sitting in front of them. So, how did it go?
The first machine probably took 2 hours of fairly close attention to install. Everything had to be documented so we could reproduce it. Then, I used that machine for a few weeks, noting what else needed to be tweaked and installed. Then, one by one, we installed the OS on the other machines. This process took about 2-3 weeks and took say 30-60 minutes of real work per machine including the updates. Then the users got a hold of them. One person notices that program X doesn't exist anymore. Another notices Y doesn't exist. Someone else notices that xvscan doesn't work, so we have to figure out how to use xsane. This continues for a month or more, each time requiring one of us to install more software on the systems and test it out. The first machine (mine) is determined to be completely out of sync due to different choices in the installer, so it is done from scratch.
I highly doubt this is a "rare case." These are just desktop machines, not even mission critical servers (although one was a web/db server).
I sure don't look forward to repeating this excercise in January 2004. If Red Hat's options are a 12-month upgrade cycle or $800/machine, we'll find some other company. But, their promised corporate desktop may be the answer for us if its priced reasonably.
I kinda see your point, but this isn't really the same thing. There will always be perfect, consumer level, support for products like Linux. It's grown without the help of companies, and will continue to grow- with or without them.
I am by no means a fan of RedHat (Slack for me), but I think that they have a legit and smart model here. You're essentially buying support when you buy their (reasonably priced) distribution. If you don't like it, then don't pay them. The ISOs will still be there tomorrow. And even then, the source code is there for the consumers to improve upon.
It isn't quite the same thing as Microsoft's forcing users to upgrade closed-source products with no new features (Office comes to mind), but even MS has to make a buck. Weather or not I agree with the means by which they do so is another story.
Overall, I don't feel that it is fair of The Register to present things this way. They've lost a lot of respect from me.
I also worked for a major company that made a very public migration from DEC Alpha systems using Tru64 to Linux. All they ever said was "look at all the money we are saving" by not having to pay those high fees for Tru64, and by being able to run the WinTel hardware platform. When I asked about support, the answer was... "no problem, its Open Source, so WE can fix any problems we run into." Famous last words. I don't remember a single bug ever getting fixed in that manner. Yet, we certainly ran into problems.
Here's MY favorite... all of the developer hardware was sized to allow all of the software build process to fit in RAM and thus avoid paging. The hardware was purchased from a major PC vendor, who sold a very solid platform at a great price. Of course, the way they did that was to sell systems with a limited upgrade path. So, when the link step of the build outgrew the original sizing, suddenly there was a major crisis. All builds were taking exponentially more time as systems started paging like crazy. And, there was no (affordable) way to throw hardware at the problem since, even though RAM was incredibly inexpensive, the systems had no headroom and thus coule not take on the additional RAM needed. Instead we all sat and waited for the builds reading up on the disputes within the Linux community regarding the algorithm used for choosing pages to page out (and understanding why we had SUCH a big problem on Linux, having had no problems with high page rates on Tru64).
Anyway, sounds to me like these RedHat EOLs fit the same pattern. If you want long, extended lifetimes for an OS, you need to pay for it. If you don't pay, then the vendor just is not going to be able to afford to provide the level of support and longevity required of for business' production systems. It will be interesting to see how all of these businesses migrating to the "free" platform deal with the fact that it really is not free at all.
There are definitely times when Linux is the cost effective and appropriate choice, even for production environments. But, it does cost money to provide support. Thus, if you need and expect long lifetimes, one should also expect to pay so the vendor can afford to provide the product to meet those expectations/needs.
Microsoft has to extend their product support because at 3 years they have usually fixed enough bugs that companies can start to use the software. If they promised not to fix any more bugs, no one would ever install their software.
But DNS servers and print spoolers that have already been running for several years do not need support from RH. In the rare case that an upgrade is needed (for a good business reason such as new abilities or a security fix,) most linux administrators can easily handle it.
This announcement means two things to me:
1. RH will no longer maintain the lists of fixes/upgrades for me unless I download/buy a recent version.
2. RH will no longer produce and test binary installs for me. (Most of the software we use is available as RPMs from the developers anyway.)
Oh well. I may have to stay current by checking ten websites instead of one.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
If you're trying to purchase a few dozen (much less a hundred or a thousand) desktop machines for corporate rollout, it's going to take you a few months to get the budget approved. Then you spend a month or two on the RFQ and RFPs, another month or so going through them, and another month or so finalizing the decision. Add on the order time, receiving time, and software installation/configuration time, and you're hitting 9-12 months before they're even hitting a user's desktop.
So you've got a good chance that by the time your users first turn on a RedHat desktop, the support has been dropped.
Congratulations, RedHat, you just knocked yourself out of competition for the corporate desktop. With Mandrake dead, that leaves SuSE as the only real contender for a corporate solution on the desktop.
On the server side, consider that it typically takes at least a year for third-party vendors to certify a distro as "supported" for their products. Sometimes it even matters -- Sybase 12.5 would only run on a certain patch level of RedHat 7.1 last time I tried it (Mandrake 8.1, 8.2, and SuSE 8.0 could not even prepare the storage space for the database without crashing, much less run a server.)
I know that most corps are going to have special contracts set up for support, but that doesn't help those of us on the development or consulting side of things who don't have the budget to pay for full AS licenses just to get a system that doesn't need to be rebuilt annually.
If I want to rebuild systems annually, I'll go back to Microsoft-based development -- there's more work supporting that junk anyhow.
I do buy full distros to support the vendors -- and end up spending far more on Linux distros per year than I ever did on Microsoft products as a result. I have RH 5.2, 6.2, 7.0, 7.1, Mandrake 7.2, 8.0, 8.1, SuSE 8.0 and 8.1 -- all full box sets at $75-100 each. Even when I don't install them, I buy kits just to help keep the companies I believe in afloat.
I sure don't appreciate RH trying to rip me off as payback. Even with RH normal pricing, who in their right mind is going to pay $150 for a full current release of RH, for which you only get a few months update support, vs. buying a generic copy of the disks for $20 plus shipping and paying less than $150 for a full year of RH update support? Such nonsense would be why RH 7.1 was the last distro of theirs I bought or installed -- I don't believe in their model anymore.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
You're a fool. You've been bamboozled into believing that everything has to be a commercial solution or it's worthless, dead, or unsuccessful. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: (sing along, kids!)
/. are not buying music and movies. thats why we would rather run anything at all but MS operating systems. And that is why we would rather code opensource than closed. The playing field is a place of crossfire and even friendly fire, so no matter what position you take, somebody will believe (not just think, believe) you to be wrong. Trust me.
Communism sucks for governments, but it works great for groups of people with a common goal!
That's right, kids...opensource is good for you. It lets you give your time to the group, or COMMUNE, and give back the results of your productivity to the masses for equal division! and the great thing about software is, that unlike the finite products that software corporations wish it to be, can be copied effortlessly countless times, with little distribution cost to anyone!
So let's all try a nice big glass of Communism today, and stop worrying about whether Capitalism is going to benefit from our pinko operating system!
but seriously, this whole copyright and software thing is just like the cold war all over again, except this time everyone who has actually researched their stuff realizes that there's far more atrocities on the pro-IP side than the commie rat bastards they want you all to think us OSS people are. I could say generic "when you support..." joke, but its no joke. thats why so many of us here on
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Have you ever planned then executed that plan to update 10,000 or so computers? Licensing costs are not the big issue.
Anarchists never rule
Large clients (e.g. banks) have the clout to ensure that once they select a hardware platform with a large provider like IBM, Dell, or Compaq, they will continue to get identical hardware on subsequent orders, even after the regular consumer can no longer order the components.
The same applies to the software they run. End of life to a large corporation only means that the general public can't get support for the product and is forced to upgrade; corps keep getting support for as long as they are paying enough.
Most corps I've worked for are running software that no one would even think of buying or installing anywhere else. It's all about maintaining compatability, and lock-stepped upgrades of entire farms of corporate systems. Even applying a software patch for the OS requires regression testing of third-party and internally-developed software that the OS vendor often does not have access to.
The last large client I worked for takes about three months to determine if an OS patch can be rolled out. Until then, you live with the problems caused by the OS bug, even if that means getting paged every morning to restart servers, or that users are going to have to put up with periodic dead sessions.
Absolutely nothing is more important to a large corp than data integrity. Not the sanity of the support staff, the profit margins of the vendors, or the "improvements" of a newer OS release. Nothing is allowed to change that might risk the data, and making changes without proper verification and authorization is a firing offense -- no matter whether they eventualy apply the update you forced or not.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Well.. the trouble is that OS tends to believe in release early, release often.
Now say that RH maintained an particular release. Over time they fix reported bugs, they update software when there are security problems, they update software for extra features and functionality, and so on..
Well isn't that just an upgrade?
However, a year is too short a time I agree. But 10 years for a server? That would require them to take every bug fix and back port it to probably 20-30 distro version. It would become totally unmanagable.
I feel for redhat and see the problem they are in. They have a very very large code base to maintain.