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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 :)
"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 :)"
I think the more important question is. Why is everyone so gung ho about seeing every RH action as "Microsoftish"? As many have already argued RH couldn't be another Microsoft. Has Microsoft scared us all so bad that we jump at the slightest movement by a commercial company? What about all the other commercial companies out there? Aren't they doing something "Microsoftish", or is it just RedHat?
This ISN'T microsoft-ish. Microsoft atleast supports their products for a little while. What this is, is a company screwing the living hell out of the community that's supported it. I've sat here and sold personal version after personal version alot with errata accounts to clients because a) cheaper b) would be supported for quite some time with good security updates and wouldn't always require upgrades to continue to use their other products.
/. apparently didn't like). I've started installing Gentoo on my workstations here already and within the next 4 weeks my redhat boxes will be gone as well.
Now I have to turn around and tell them that Redhat changed it's game plan and convert each one of these clients over, or let them continue to pay me to constantly upgrade their network just to keep them within their errata entitlements. I for one....basically said to hell with redhat about 5 hours ago (incidently right after I submitted my story that
Face it people, the people like "us" have made redhat and they just turned their back on us for the corperate world.
Don't get me wrong, I have NO problem with end of life, but 1 year for what's there now. The woman I spoke with at Redhat (yes I did research it directly with the company not just reading what nimrods say) she said that after this first round, there's going to be another change. Anyone using personal or the "free" version (and probably the professional) will ONLY be eligable for errata during the time that the release they are using is current. As soon as they release another version, errata for the older is gone. In other words, since redhat releases usually twice a year....that would me 2 upgrades a year just to keep yourself up2date. Screw that.
Why not tie the EOL for redhat desktop products to the vailidity of of the RHCE for it? For corporates, its going to be very hard to get approval for certification training if you know the EOL of the product is less than the period of the certification (I recall the figure of 2 major releases being mentioned by the instructor). This could damage RedHat's rep in the training market (one of their key publicity points in the last few years).
I'm surprised that people are still running RH6.0. It's far less secure than 7.x or 8.0. The desktop (and server environment) are much better as well. Sure there are some libc5 legacy apps but there's really no excuse for a server to be running it. Upgrade or do a fresh install and use the newer features (like journalling, LVM, iptables, 2.4 series kernels etc) because they make an immense difference. RH7.2 really should be a minimum if you are serious.
You mean we can't download a free product and suck down bandwith from the company for the rest of our lives?! REVOLUTION! Maybe some people haven't noticed but Mandrake who we thought was doing great is all but dead, how Redhat pays thier bills I have no idea. Look people, It's time we allow some of these open source companies to ern some money, they have done alot for us and are still doing more than just about any other company. The only companys I can think of off the top of my head that do more for the people are charitys and ones funded by tax dollars. The only thing I would ask is that, when I buy redhat 7.3 the errata will last untill redhat 8.3. I look at everything inbetween as a sort of beta software, I have no problem spending $50 every year and a half, but not every 6 months.
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
But the RHCE program is geared towards this same "consumer" release. Current RHCE is for Redhat 8.x version and you have to get recertified every other (consumer) major release number. So, what good is RHCE? You get certified to run your home Linux box then?
Amen, and this is the argument I threw at my RH account rep. We currently pay a few grand annually for RHN enterprise and I am very happy with it. But if RHN stops offering errata after just one year, it's utility goes away from me and hence I'll stop paying for it. I'd bet others in my shoes will do the same thing. I'll either have to switch to another distro or start hand patching systems or just switch to Windows Server (well, hmm, I'm not *THAT* pissed off... :)
It was the availability of a cheap base price and an affordable RHN subscription that got me the green light to replace our NT servers with Red Hat servers. I expended a lot of political capital making arguments about savings in maintenance and deploring the Microsoft upgrade treadmill. Management was suspicious but in the end trusted my judgement as the "expert" opinion.
I'm going to look like a fucking asshole if red hat puts us on the same high cost / upgrade treadmill program that I convinced everyone we were getting out of.
Note to red hat: continue to provide an affordable RHN subscription and don't force us to upgrade our servers every 12 months. If you do, during one of those upgrade cycles, you will find yourselves alongside MS in the dustbin, and we'll move to another distro. Or, worst case scenario, management will no longer see the monetary benefit and decide to return to the comforting familiarity of Microsoft's eager clutches, and I'll be "that dick with no sense of judgement" for the rest of my career.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
It's suprising that some folks are just now finding this out. I noticed this a while back while trying to get a decent fix for the fubar xinetd package Redhat is pushing on its pre-8.0 distros.
I was really suprised by this since a long lifespan is the one thing that RedHat had over Mandrake (Mandrake's product lifespan is 2 years from date of initial release..) I don't know about the rest of you, but I have servers running right now with 2 years of uptime..some are in the same city as me, some are colocated in other cities. I can't upgrade these systems without either flying to the colocation site or having them mailed to me.
I came to precisely the same conclusion as the folks in this article. If you're using Linux on a server, it's stupid to use anything other than Debian. The commercial distros NEED you to upgrade, whether or not there are any compelling new features in their new versions. The Debian developers could care less about you buying a new set of CDs every six months.
It's pretty funny that RedHat seems to be following right in Mandrake's footsteps here. It will be a great boon for virus writers if they really do drop support for all those 7.2 installs out there...but I can't imagine that serious sysadmins will put up with this for very long.