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Progeny To Offer Support For Red Hat 8.0 and 9
zerocool^ writes "In a previous story it was noted that Progeny would offer support to Red Hat 7.2 and 7.3 customers facing an End of Life deadline of 31 December 2003. Progeny has updated their 'transitional software' offerings to include support for Red Hat 8.0 and 9 for $5 per month, per machine. This is great news for IT folks who are faced with the choice of a new OS or abandoned 1-year-old software."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Progeny Transition Service
NEW! Support added for Red Hat(R) Linux(R) 8.0 & 9
Beginning January 1, 2004, Progeny will offer software updates for users of Red Hat(R) Linux(R) 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, and 9. This service is based on Progeny's Platform Services technology and will provide a flexible migration path for RHL subscribers.
Progeny Transition Service includes the following features:
* Subscribers have access to a software repository containing security updates.
* Patches will also be available via Novell(R)'s Ximian(R) Red Carpet Enterprise(TM) version 2.0.
* Subscribers will be notified of security vulnerabilities and available patches.
* Pricing is $5 per machine per month; or a flat rate of $2,500 per month for unlimited machines.
* Quotes for custom platform services are available.
* Limited to x86 support.
This service is part of Progeny's Platform Services.
MS has stopped support for their old stuff and nobody can help. When Redhat stops, other companies can step forward and help (hopefully, even profit).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Maybe they can do the same thing with Windows 98 while they're at it. ;)
Their initial plans are to roll this out using a password protected website (that could be automated using wget, etc). I would prefer up2date or something similar to keep things updated.
This seems like a pretty big undertaking...I wish them luck with the resources of patching/recompiling all the packages.
This and the IBM Linux commercial, among other things make me feel good that these companies actually want to help out Linux.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
$2500 per month for unlimited machines? Google could get one heck of a deal!
Support Windows 98
to go OSS, not that many here needed any more encouragement. Imagine if companies could buy support for NT 4 or Win98 for five bucks a machine after next month? There would be some companies still using them ten years from now. Well, some probably will anyway.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It's because they're not Microsoft.
When Redhat EOLs its products after a year, they're doing so to remain competitive in a changing marketplace, or something like that.
When Microsoft EOLs its products after 6 or 7 years, they're doing it to force customers into upgrades.
This is Slashdot, remember...
I mean, I'm a nerd of my own and never used a paid Linux user support, but often helped people and many times I faced a problem I couldn't solve "over the phone".
So, how good is such user support?
Say, I run an important mailing list. A random power failure, severe disk corruption, nobody really knows what works OK and what is broken, week-old backup of data, no system backup, no network, no other computer to move the harddisk, I must work with this broken system. I must get it back up and running with as much of remaining database as possible, possibly fixing any corruption. Is the user support good enough to lead me through such landmine-ridden system?
(if the above doesn't seem disastrous enough for you, think of your favourite "heavy disaster" scenario that still leaves some hope of recovery)
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why so many of us use debian on our servers. Sure, the software is 4 years old - but it isn't a headache to support. It doesn't need upgrades, so none are made unless there's a security problem or a bugfix.
(I'm talking about debian stable, btw)
On the other hand, I think it's fairly dastardly and unsportsman-like for RedHat to drop support for their older products. Granted, there's a lot of stuff there to support - so why not weed out non-critical applications from the list of "supportable installations"? apache, sql, and other "enterprise-class" software?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Windows 98 is older than one year. (actually it is nearly 6) Redhat 8 and 9 however....
Finkployd
Errmm perhaps because all companies EOL their products at some stage? Of course if you want to start a company and maintain it on a profitable basis and continue supporting kernel versions and software versions to way back whenever then by all means go ahead and do it. You'll be a hero to all of us.
$5 a month is a STEAL...
People should jump on this.
I wish the company doing this well.
More power to OSS!!
Didn't Windows support their stuff for much longer (e.g. Win95)? And with a very long period of backward compatibility (to the detriment of their product) you didn't really need more support.
Meanwhile, every time you turn around all the Linux distros have changed version. When you go to the use groups for help on an "old" version the reply is: "I don't know, but it doesn't do that in the new version." or "Yeah that was a known bug. The new version takes care of it." Thank gawd the upgrades are cheap $$. If only they were cheap in time.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I thought one of the purported advantages of Linux was to avoid the Microsoft upgrade cycle? It seems that you've just replaced one upgrade cycle with another more agressive upgrade cycle, totally ignoring the fact that there is a cost to upgrading, even if you pay nothing for the OS.
but it would seem to me that if you're getting paid to maintain a Linux system, you should already have a few manuals handy and be able to diagnose and solve your problems without resorting to calling some tech support place...
My guess is, the important part of these support contracts is not the tech hotline, but the integration of security patches into the applications, especially if those applications have distro-specific modifications.
You Red Hat apologists are worse than the Mac fanatics. Can you possibly come up with a worse analogy than that? Red Hat 9 is less than 1 year old and will cease to receive security updates as of the end of April! That's like announcing you'll no longer be able to get parts or service for your 2003 Ford Explorer after April. Oh, and your support warranty? Sorry, that's going to be discontinued, but we'll give you a discount on upgrading to one of our new 2004 Ford Expeditions with the extended warranty coverage for your trouble. People that actually buy into Red Hat Enterprise Linux are morons if they think Red Hat won't do this to them again. How will you like your shiny new copy of RHEL 3 when you find out it'll be EOL'd in a year and you'll be forced to upgrade to RHEL 4 if you want to continue to get basic security updates? Even Microsoft is a LOT better than that. Windows 2000 came out in 1999 and still is updated quite frequently. I have some serious decisions I need to make within the next few months. Do I want to continue with this Linux experiment or go back to a tried and proven company that respects their customers like Microsoft. I can't afford to reinstall my OS every year... Sorry Red Hat, but you lose my business.
that decided to suddenly drop support for their product not even a year later?
I am trying hard to resist flaming, but you are an idiot. For 50th time since this story broke, RedHat announced there would only be one year of support for 9 when it was released. That's right, when it was released.
I don't care how much you and every other "RedHat sucks, RedHat has no integrity" moron weren't paying attention. They clearly announced their intentions, and started promoting the RHEL line at that time.
You are free to disagree with RedHat's move, but all of this anti-RedHat FUD is really disgusting.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Then again, with linux you are not limited to what 1 single supplier thinks they can make you swallow. There are alternatives, debian, SuSE, etc. You are not limited to RH||Microsoft.
But you knew this, of course, and just left it out for rhetorical reasons.
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
As the current situation proves, what Red Hat sells has value. Because anyone can step up to the plate and make things work, someone will. Because Red Hat has something of value the company will continue to have value, even if the worst things you might say about what they are doing were true.
Of course, they have not really dumped anything. The last two interviews that Slashdot had with Red Hat CEOs should have cleared up all of this FUD. People are not in anyway left with such a poor choice as abandoning 1 year old software or moving to a whole new OS. I don't feel like treading all of that ground again, go read the interviews. Let's just say that I know people running Red Hat 6 without security or performance problems, it should not be hard for individual users to transition to Fedora and corporate users are going to have their needs looked after as always.
We can contrast the situation with Micorosoft's EOL for win98. In that case the "support" was not worth much to begin with as you were still rooted once a year like clockwork. Who's going to pick up the "support" for systems like that? They are going to go the same place Win 3.1 and win 95 systems have gone - liberated or trashed.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Say, I run an important mailing list. A random power failure, severe disk corruption, nobody really knows what works OK and what is broken, week-old backup of data, no system backup, no network, no other computer to move the harddisk, I must work with this broken system. I must get it back up and running with as much of remaining database as possible, possibly fixing any corruption. Is the user support good enough to lead me through such landmine-ridden system?
I am trying to get some support on my Linux boxes, but I don't need it on the internal network. Not everyone needs 100% or 0% service. If the computer at the front desk dies, I have a backup box I throw there until I figure out whats wrong, or replace the box. If the dedicated web server goes down, I will gladly pay anything for help to get it up NOW. If the front desk computer dies, and I don't have a backup computer, well, go to the other computer in the warehouse. If the web server dies at 3AM, I drive there, make a pot of coffee, and either fix it, remount the drives in a backup server, restore backups to the server or a backup server, or get my ass chewed. Our firewall has a backup computer that is preconfigured so I can throw the dead firewall out, plug in the old backup, and have everyone back online in 10 minutes. We run two isolated T1 lines that the firewall can switch back and forth from, from a ssh shell anywhere. A single saleman's computer is not nearly as critical.
Some systems are simply too critical to NOT pay for service. Some are not.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
there's more than a shred of truth to that quip about Google....
Let's say you spend $30,000/year for unlimited patch access and you have a 4000 node linux server farm that has an expected usable life of no more than 3 years.
That's $90,000 for "lifetime" patching of 4000 machines or a $22.50 uplift on purchase price of each individual machine for lifetime patching.
Redcarpet licenses cost a whole lot more than that!
I can't wait for Progeny to offer their patching services for Redhat Enterprise Linux 3.0... oh wait... isn't Redhat Planning on making all of their money from Support?!?
Poor Redhat...
See, these ad hominem attacks are what's giving Linux a bad image in various circles to begin with. It's people like you who are creating the impression that desktop Linux is for elitists who sit in darkened basements watching The Matrix Reloaded in a console, illuminated only by the glow of your riced-out computer with blinking blue LEDs and adhesive case window "etchings." The ultimate irony is that while you call his post "pedantic drivel" (I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with this assertion), yet do absolutely naught to discredit it. "Elegant underpinnings?" Sure, they're elegant, but why? Or are you too elite to go into detail? If you don't know, you're too stupid to ever get it, right?
You are little more than a stereotype of the community. Just look at the words you're using. Luser? Little boy? GUI-pidity? This sort of vapid senselessness is why it took me until this year to make the jump to Linux, because if I wanted help with anything, I had to either pay for commercial support or put up with assholes like you.
If I had any mod points, you'd get 'em.
Some in the Linus community don't understand why it's not making more headway onto the corporate desktop. The reason is that the vast majority of corporate computer users are like the people they show in those stupid Office 2003 commercials. They wear button-downs w/ ties, they work in big sterile buildings, and they want their software to have an easy-to-use GUI to lead them through their work. And this goes even more for the C-level people who make the IT spending decisions.
If something goes wrong, they don't want to hear about what a "luser" they are, or that they should jump into bash and run a script, or have to upgrade their OS after a year because the "old" one is no longer supported.
MS takes a lot of grief over their Service Packs, but truth be told, it's a pretty effective way to maintain things over a reasonable lifetime.
No sig, sorry.
I've read an awful lot of "see this is why open source is good" and "hah! Windows 98 had free support for 5 years", so let's just boil this down a little.
No one (except maybe a few deluded individuals) are claiming that Redhats EOL after only a year is a particularly nice thing to have happen. I'm not that happy about it, but I can push on with Fedora which actually works quite nicely, and all will be well. But the short answer is: EOL after a year is a bad thing no matter who does it. Equally, I think Microsoft supporting Windows 98 for 5 years is not a bad effort all things considered (and there will be fewer who will agree with me on that, but hey).
I think the point being made here is NOT that Redhat EOLing after a year is good, or terribly acceptable. The point is that, under this system, in the worst case if the company you are with ups stakes and moves to a different market and leaves you in the cold, you have some recourse.
I think it is great that Microsoft has provided 5 years of support for Windows 98. The catch is, if they were to decide t EOL Server 2003 tomorrow, there's not a whole lot anyone could do about it (especially given the healthy degree of lockin Microsoft has gained). I don't think that Microsoft will do that, but then we don't know. I do recall there was some fuss recently about whether the latest OS X patches were going to available for Jaguar. Had they not been, what would Apple users been left with? Or, to look at it another way, BeOS got seriously EOLd a while ago. There are some fine efforts with OpenBeOS to reconstruct it, but that's no small task, and until they manage something BeOS is effectively dead (well, okay, there's Zeta, but that was a lucky save). This is a demonstration that, in the worst case for a Linux Distro, it's not the end.
So, to reapeat: EOL - bad. Continuing Support - good.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
I have a heavy commitment to Redhat, without it I don't have to upgrade a server, I have to upgrade many of them. I am not going to spend thousands on Enterprise Redhat, that would be the very reason I went for the "free" OS in the first place. I tried the switch to Debian on one of them and after some mucking around got it going adequately. As someone who's lived their entire linux life in Redhat land, Debian's a nasty shock. The install process is a nightmare and all the conf files are in different places. BUT you live and learn and it's not that hard... after all, that's what google's for! :)
On the other hand, i stuck the Severn disks into my one of my redhat 9 servers and said 'upgrade'. I know this will get rebuked but it worked perfectly. So i put it in a few more. Now i've got about 4 Redhat-9 boxes, 1 Debian box and 3 Severn boxes. All work fine and to be honest, which do i prefer? Severn...
My point? Give it a shot - it's free and it's basically identical to Redhat 9 (with Apt + Yum built in).
And stop bitching. It's not like RedHat is the only game in town. There's SuSE (now backed by Novell, and you can hardly say they're minor) and for the do-it-yourselfer, there's Debian, Gentoo, Slack, and even Fedora.
Whats to stop someone with 1000 boxes running their own apt suppository (i know, i prefer this term, seems more errr accurate) from paying $60 per annum for a single box with every package installed, and simply copying the rpm packages from the /var/cache/path to the repository?
M
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
"When Microsoft EOLs its products after 6 or 7 years, they're doing it to force customers into upgrades."
I think you missed the point in this article. Whem Microsoft EOLs its products, YOU HAVE NO ALTERNATIVES. When RH EOLs its products, you can turn to any company willing to offer support.
Since the source code isn't available for Windows, you just don't have that option. Therefore, Microsoft has a much higher responsibility with how it handles product lifecycles.
Engineering and the Ultimate
yeah and in 2000 everyone PAID MS for the product. %99 of Redhats users downloaded it for free then download updates for free. If redhat was extracting a 'tax' from every soul on the planet like MS. I'm sure they'd hire 10 more guys to compile updates longer. Comparing a company that just had its first profit to one that has more money than most country's is f***ing stupid and you should be disgusted with yourself.
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
RedHat may be EOLing their support for 7.3, but as long as there are enough people still using it who are willing to pay the price, there will be somebody who will make critical (and even not-so-critical) patches available -- even if it has to be done in-house.
For people with (the just recently EOLed) Win/98 the options for support are .... well, I might as well just take them out to the barn and shoot them. It's not just difficult for me to provide any meaningfull support for Win'98.. If you believe their EULA, it's pretty much illegal. When MS EOL's XP, you won't even have the option of transferring to a new box/HD if something goes wrong with your hardware, because the OS will just self-destruct, and MS won't want to talk to you about it.
Another example of what happens when you trust yourself to closed soure is what happened to Israel with hebrew support on Mac Office. It's to Microsoft's advantage to get them to move to Windows instead, so they just decided to not support it on the Mac. No ammount of money that Israel offered them is going to get them to change their mind, because Microsoft wants Israel to be a Windows-only country. It has bull squat to do with cutomer service or direct profit. The country of Israel is at the mercy of Microsoft's (larger) business plan.
Isreal's answer is that they're moving to Open Office on the Mac -- but wait! OO isn't supported on OSX! That's OK. Israel can pay for a small skunk-works to get it working, and get OO's hebrew support up to snuff. No forcing anybody to do anything there... they want it, they can afford to pay someone to do it, it gets done.
QED
First Germany, now Israel... next, the world , (bwahahahaha!).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
since I'm sure you know this (initial plans..) but for those who missed it they cover this in their FAQ. Basically if there is enough interest (read $$) to support it they will do it, but they are just testing the waters and would be smart not to invest too many resources until they know we'll pony up (they'll get my $60).
Quack, quack.
Did it say "This product will only be supported for one year" on the box? Or was it just at the end of the press release, surrounded in marketbabble?
You're right - it *is* important. Most companies seek to talk down bad news, but where they owe a duty of care to their customers it pays to make things clear, and I don't think RedHat did that very well.
In particular, while Red Hat did put out the EOL statement reasonably early, they did not say what was going to happen to Red Hat Linux until Nov 3rd this year, when they sent out an email in which they casually mentioned that "Red Hat does not plan to release another product in the Red Hat Linux line."
Until then, many people thought that they had simply put a 12-month cap on updates for each release and were preparing themselved for a 12-month cycle. They didn't think the free version was going to go altogether. This was also before Fedora was announced, BTW.
I also think the media also overlooked the support issues somewhat. At the time 9 came out, I don't remember any journos writing articles saying "RedHat 9 is out... cool, but support will hit the buffers next year, look out!" Most of the coverage was just re-hashed RedHat press releases.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
First of all, I would like to say that while I'm not a Red Hat zealot, I'm am a Red Hat sympathizer. I've been a Red Hat user since RHL 4.2, and will continue to use their products when possible. I'm not the happiest with what has happened in the recent months, but I see that this will overall be best for the company.
:)
I manage about 40 machines, most of which are currently running RHL 7.2 and 7.3. We are in the process of transitioning to a gentoo-based distro. A custom stage 3 tarball has been created that can be plopped onto a server and already contains the extra utilities needed as a base level for our servers (ntpd, screen, etc). I've frozen the portage tree, and are side-porting updated software that has been released as the result of a GLSA. This prevents the server set from being too "bleeding edge", while still being secure.
That being said, it'll take a good deal of time to convert 40 servers over from RHL to gentoo. The Progency announcement is great for us, it gives us a bit of insurance against a flaw coming out that we can't immediately solve. Personally, I'd like nothing more than running RHEL on our servers. RHEL focuses more on stability than new whiz-bang features, and the 5-year support life is a plus. But RHEL costs money, money we can't really justify right now. And unfortunately, our business size (small to medium) is no longer the target customer size for Red Hat's business. They're going after the 1000ish-server and 10000ish-workstation market. Again, annoyed, but at least understandable.
I see Red Hat's biggest mistake being announcing the Fedora project AFTER announcing the EOLs on RHL. If they would have announced Fedora and released Fedora Core 1, say 6 months before even announcing the EOL of RHL products, it would have eased the fears of many people. I have Fedora Core 1 running on a workstation, and it works pretty damn well IMHO. But I would not run it in a production environment yet because it's new and unproven and scary.
Secondly, the argument about RHL 9 being out less than a year before being EOLed: Red Hat DID announce that they would only be supporting RHL 9 for a short time, but they probably should have said it louder than they did. Alternatively, if they would have gotten off the ground with the Fedora project earlier like I mentioned above, RHL 9 should have become Fedora Core 1, and would have played into the above strategy.
So that's my take on this. Red Hat could have done things much differently to avoid annoying the smaller linux sysadmin, but that's all in the past now. Like it or not, Red Hat is moving in a new direction, and I wish them the best of luck. I just wish that my position didn't prevent me from moving along with them. Also, kudos to Progency for stepping up to the plate and providing transition support for these products.
By the way, it's "Red Hat". Not "RedHat". Just because the two words in their company name are short doesn't allow you to merge them together. Pretty soon you'll have people going to Slash Dot to read about AlanCox speaking out against Micro Soft
I would have loved to have thrown a few hundred dollars at redhat over the last few years. They walked away from the table.