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Red Hat Recap
We have some assorted Red Hat stories which can be - and in fact already have been - jumbled together for your reading pleasure, like a sort of literary succotash. Forbes has an accusatory piece about Red Hat's licensing model, which is apparently, err, Microsoft-esque. Red Hat reminds everyone that RH9 is not going to be officially supported for much longer. Internetnews.com has a brief interview with Red Hat's CEO.
Everything you wanted to know about red hat but were afraid to ask... six months ago.
Sure Bill Gates' hair is fugly, but give his barber some credit! At least he managed to cover the horns on his forehead.
How can we accept Red Hat's per-seat pricing and overbearing EULAs that allow them to audit user sites for license compliance? Why does Red Hat get a free pass from the community and from the FSF for constricting our freedom as badly as Microsoft ever has?
Rick Carey speaks the truth. Red Hat is no more a "Free" choice than Microsoft is.
i'm going to have to upgrade my machines, but am NOT going to pay $179 to do it, but can't trust the possibility of Fedora adding/removing/changing things willy-nilly (i know there's more care taken than that, but not the kind of care that will taken with Enterprise for Workstations and it's siblings). i'm not sure which distro will upgrade my RedHat installs with the least disruption. And i hate to sound like a crufty old man, but i'm used to the RH tools and don't really desire to learn the in's and out's of a new distro, but i 'spose i'll have to.
*shakes head at RedHat*
Forbes seems rather optimistic about linux - just take a look at their 'linux at work' sidebox.
Linux Loyalists Leery
- IBM Refuses To Indemnify Linux Users
- Red Hat's Mad Matt Vs. Humongous SCO Lawsuit
- IBM Takes Linux To A New Level
- Why You Won't Be Getting A Linux PC
- The Limitations Of Linux
- Boies' Take On Linux
- PeopleSoft Jumps On The Linux Train
- Oracle's Linux Lineup
- The Cult Of Linux
#!/bin/csh cat $0
Talk about a bunch of BS. RedHat wants to charge for support for the OS. Now Carey does not want to buy Linux but would rather go with Windows. So pay Microsoft for a license and then hire your staff for support to address the problems that Microsoft did not fix. Or use Linux and pay Redhat to support the OS and not pay any licenses, or not pay RedHat and hire your own staff. Either way you are not paying for a license to Redhat and you are paying for support for both products so it seems like Linux is still a winner.
The job used to be having to explaing OSS and Linux, sell it, and if they wanted Red Hat, fine. It was the least of your worries.
Red Hat is now three separate moving targets:
fedora
rhel
rh9
Present that to a business person and they just say... "Thank you. Next".
They claim the cost of switching ditributions is very high, potentially involving rewriting a lot of code that you had written that may have taken advantage of features of the particular distribution.
That one strikes me as a little odd - I've been pretty distribution agnostic myself, and never really had any problems moving from one to another. At worst you can just install a few extra packages to cover some version differences. Then again, I'm a single user - I'm not trying to maintain an enterprise wide system, nor do I really have any experience with such things.
So, my question is, how big are the costs of an enterprise changing distributions? I can certainly understand some significant cost (potential retraining, reorgansing the system a little to work with any new structures) but I can't quite imagine it being that high. If I had to guess, I would imagine it not being overly different from say, upgrading from Windows2k to WindowsXP or some such.
Can someone with some experience in this provide some insight?
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
We want to make sure that we do focus on the SMB (small/medium business) market.
I have a Red Hat certification but I am unable to install it anywhere. I get install jobs because of the price and they priced themselves completely out of the SMB
market.
When I bid a job against the local MS junk pushers I under cut them typically by as much as one tenth the cost. Red Hat is way to costly in this cut throat environment to compete with small business server so I don't even consider it.
Got Code?
Since Red Hat is open source, you have at least the following choises: Cent OS, and Tao Linux. Both being clones of RHEL.
Novell has Ximian for its connectors (that means ZENworks for Linux is on the way), a solid distribution to integrate their tools with and run their services (like eDirectory) on, and GroupWise for productivity - which is already mature. In other words, Novell has the future of Linux on the corporate desktop locked, and is poised to make Linux easily managed in the low end server market with their already existing tools and directories.
It is only a matter of time before IBM stops relying on Redhat as a partner, and instead chooses Novell/Suse or their own Linux distro.
Redhat is pretty much over. I stopped caring about them after they released Fedora.
I don't see any particular problem with paying for software I need and $179 really isn't that much. I'll end up paying it one way or the other to RH or Novell (SuSE). No, I have NO intention of moving to some boutique distro that requires a Linux Guru to manage.
By the way, I don't quite understand why people that will pay $200 plus on an iPod, big cash in the latest game toy / case mod / whoop-dee-doo / sushi bar excess, why $179 for an OS is a proble.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Just a quick post: those of you bashing Red Hat for various reasons, consider this:
1) They release all their config tools under the GPL
2) They contribute to the kernel, GCC, glibc, XFree86, GNOME, OpenOffice.org and other projects
3) They're standing up and fighting SCO
Hey, I'm not too happy about the whole RH-to-Fedora business, but Red Hat as a company deserves huge respect. Without its help and funding, Linux would not be progressing so fast.
Go back to the days of GCC 2.7.x, XFree86 3.3 etc. to see what I mean...
...unless you've specifically written code for some of any proprietary apps included with a distro (which should be quite obvious if you do) then I don't see the problem.
If anything, I'd be worried about user training. Different distros may look quite different on the surface, and normal users might have trouble finding stuff. But I don't think it's worse than a Windows version change...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I work at a University so we can purchas RH Enterprise Workstation licenses for $25 and Advanced Server licenses for $50. I've found RHEL to be an excellent, stable distro. RHN in particular is very well done. I love being able to reboot or update my systems through rhn.redhat.com and have errata automatically applied with no interaction on my part. I realize businesses pay considerably more $$$ for RHEL but remember, you're still paying for services (errata, installation support, etc). If you don't have the dough, Fedora is still an excellent product. FC1 started out a little shaky but has stabilized considerably. FC2 is on it's way to becoming an excellent modern Linux distro. RedHat remains committed to Open Source (they still don't deal with *any* closed source code), they still are one of the largest organizational contributors to the Linux Kernel project, Apache, Samba, etc. RedHat has a great future IMHO....
Many PHBs think that Redhat and Linux are the same thing. They do not know that Redhat is a distribution of linux and that other distributions such as debian, slackware, and SuSE exist. Ask several PHBs what version of linux is ran in their offices and they will say Linux 9.
Forbes:
"Most open source is imitation," Carey says. "Linux is an imitation of an operating system. If these [Linux] companies are going to create a price point that is significant enough that they are approaching the same pricing model as the innovation premium, why pay a premium for imitation when I can pay a premium and get innovation?"
This comment is a prime example of such a case. They see the cost of Linux going up when the cost of Linux never went up in the first place. They fail to see that they are paying for the support that Redhat provides, not for linux itself. In order to push linux in the business world, it is important that PHBs understand that linux does not come from a single company. They must understand how the liscencing works, and that they can always just hire a few admins to update their boxes -- not just rely on Redhat to do it for them.
Just do a cvsup to the latest ports tree. and portupgrade all your ports.
/stand, ./sysinstall, and from there select configure and you can upgrade to a newer distro over the internet!
Or if its a server do a cd
If you absolutely need Linux, then look at Debian stable. Very well tested and also free.
http://saveie6.com/
Maybe my perspective is different on this because I make my living in the Support department of a company that sells support contracts that ultimately pay for me. I tend to be frustrated by our Sales and Implementation departments driving things under The Manufacturing Delusion, more interested in 'making the sale' than creating an environment that offers our customers an ongoing service. Lately I've seen signs to suggest we might be turning that around, though.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
but they didn't put it in bold :) Oh well.
Once the article came out, I called Red Hat to make sure I hadn't misinterpreted what they were doing -- and to attempt to clarify how they were restricting distribution of what was apparently GPL'd software.
The person I spoke to make a clear distinction between the binary distribution and the source code. The source code is available for free download, and will continue to be available for free download forever. On the other hand, they do restrict you from installing the binary distribution onto multiple machines. They say that the act of compiling the programs, and assembling them into a distribution, is work that they demand to be compensated for.
I was under the mistaken impression that the price of the distribution was to compensate for the maintainance, and that they really wouldn't mind of you installed from the CD onto multiple machines. That is incorrect, they "consider that a violation of their license."
There are obviously loopholes that you could drive a truck through, if you were so inclined. I asked, and there is apparently no restriction on reverse engineering of the distribution, so you could buy one copy, download the corresponding source code, and make an exact copy of each of the programs in the distribution, and put those files on all of your machines. You could also monitor what their up2date system is doing on one machine, download the source code changes and compile and install those on each machine. This would be a significant pain in the neck, of course.
It's interesting that Red Hat has not done some things that would prevent one from doing this. In particular, they do not include software that Red Hat has written, but is not GPL'd. If they had done that, then there would be no way to legally create an identical distribution from source code.
We've got about 100 systems running RH 8 and 9. Some 40 of those are dual Opteron boxes, for which Red Hat Enterprise Edition is about $800/box, so it would not be an insignificant expense to sign up for the system.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Fedora - this is what RH was before it got tangled up in retail and other things that slowed it down. Its regular releases, new toys and akin to RH5, RH6, RH7, etc
RHEL - business oriented product with Red Hat support and with certifications and testing guarantees for things like Oracle. In order to b e supportable it handles less hardware, contains less packages and picks more conserative ones, as well as having a long lifetime.
I've not found many businesses have problems untangling this. but some of the non business folks got a little baffled or still don't realise that
a) FC1 updates RH9 fine
b) FC is exactly what old RHL (7.x etc) was about.
I think Red Hat has seriously underestimated the importance of their loss leader (the series of low-end boxed sets ending with RH9). Fedora is a step in the right direction, but it has a beta-quality feel to it that turned this long-time Red Hat user off to it.
I'm in the market for another distro right now -- something that would not have happened if there were such a thing as RHL 10. So what's it going to be? SuSE? White Box Linux? Something else? Hopefully I'll have that answer in a couple of months. It's not going to be Fedora, and I've got too many customers that aren't willing to pay the premium for RHEL.
They've shot themselves in the foot. RHL was an important loss leader that established the brand. People were familiar with RHL, so they were eager to buy RHEL. Without the low end product, where do you build your market from? People who are just getting started with Linux now, might just install SuSE since there's no RHL. And when they're ready to step up, those big bucks are going to go to Novell, not Red Hat.
It's a shame that success has blinded Red Hat to the realities of the marketplace. They are ready to pretend to be Microsoft, but reality says that RH ain't Microsoft. The users aren't locked in and they will move if they feel they're being screwed with.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
"Red Hat Professional Workstation... Enterprise Linux for personal use"
The above quote is from redhat.com
Seems they're rethinking their corporate focus after the backlash from the RHL screw up. So which is it RH, enterprise or personal? Thought you guys didn't want personal users? You've lost my business for good... business & personal.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
So this means that you are not really paying for the software, rather, you are paying for the work of putting it together, support, and updates. I don't see a problem with that as Red Hat is a for-profit corporation afterall. I doubt that there are many slashdotters who are willing to give up their day job, create their own linux distro, and support and update them full time without asking for money.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
This is another Daniel Lyons article.
;]
Daniel Lyons is an idiot. He does no research whatsoever, as far as I can tell. He wrote a piece on Groklaw that consisted of reading PJ's (inaccurate, to protect her privacy) whois information on her domain and accusing her of working for IBM simply because IBM has an office in that city (the irony being that she doesn't actually live there...).
To support his arguements, he quoted random trolls. I don't remember offhand if they were from Yahoo or Slashdot, but it doesn't matter and I mention this simply to give you some idea of how little thought this man puts into his pieces.
In short, the proper response to an idiotic article like this is simply to consider the source, and then ignore it. Save, of course, that I reccomend to everyone who might care that they never subscribe to Forbes because their research is shoddy, and I can prove it with respect to these stories.
At least Didio seemed to finally wake up when last she commented on SCO, only to stop commenting on it (at least, so far as I have seen as of this writing). Lyons, however, seems to have gotten upset when it became clear to anyone following the SCO story that he had done no research, and is thus personally invested in the story at this point. That is the only explanation I can give for his incredibly infantile and poorly reserached article on PJ, which was, ironically motivated by her comments that he needed to do better research...
So then, it is clear that Forbes' editors are prone to letting poorly researched crap past them (assuming they actually do any sort of editorial review over Lyons to begin with), and that the entire publication should be considered suspect until such time as they can demonstrate better research skills, not to mention a higher level of maturity.
Frankly, to me, Lyons is nothing more than a troll who uses a spell checker and has wider readership. My primary uses for his article consist entierly of a meager amount of comedic value and source material to have printed on novelty toilet paper. I should hope that no one ever decides to challenge that as fair use, because I would have too much amusement in creating bad puns with the acronym IP...
More and more, I get the feeling that Red Hat has jumped the shark.
Novell is moving aggressively into the corporate market, while reveling in the power of viral marketing by "doing the right thing" by the Open Source community. It's agressively pursuing big deals, like the recent one to put SuSe on IBM's boxes. Knoppix and Mandrake have the n00b market all but cornered, and Debian and Gentoo are the must-haves for the Power Users.
Fedora is the odd distro out: not as approachable as Mandrake, not as stable as Debian, not as bleeding edge as Gentoo, and without the corporate cred of Novell. Red Hat, in spinning off Fedora, has really alienated a lot of potential customers, most of which buy on the say-so of seasoned geeks. Geeks are no longer saying Red Hat.
Oddly enough, Slackware is seeing something of a renaissance... stable and secure and with support contracts available is very attractive to a lot of traditional Unix shops who don't need flash and flair.
SoupIsGood Food
There's always CentOS 3.1.
http://www.centos.org/
It's Redhat Enterprise 3 minus all the proprietary crap (built from the same SRPMs) and it's free. For those who don't have time to keep up with all the security goings on, they seem to be Johnny on the spot with security/bug updates so a simple:
yum update
will check for and install updates on all installed packages. Good stuff. I'm in the process of upgrading my farm of RH 7.3 boxen to Centos 3.1 now and it has been rather painless. I wanted to stick with something that "looked like" Redhat to eliminate the admin learning curve and to make it easy to install commercial packages that are dependent on Redhat-isms.
Cheers,
Although Linux and open source in general are favorite Daniel Lyons topics, he recently published two incoherent rants trashing Sun. But it's likely he gets a bigger response out of trashing open source, so he'll probably return to that.
So if you like this kind of trash talk, fine, but if you don't, just do what you do with Rush: stop listening.
'Szulik says he'd love it if Red Hat could become the next Microsoft. "Who wouldn't want to be Microsoft?" he asks. "I mean, come on. Honestly."'
-I wouldn't. The Linux OS is about stability and integrity. Dictionary.com defines Integrity : 'Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.'
-The companies that represent what linux is should reflect this in their business practices as well as their products.
'"This is not a religion," Carey says. "I want the most value for the dollars I spend." '
-It is not a religion. But, we do have loyalty, followers, proclaimers and believers of this technology.
-Do not overthrow microsoft and replace it with a wondersoft or megasoft. Replace it with something good.
Something good.
-Replace it with something we can respect and admire; with something that reflects the target-audience's beliefs.
It is smart to get the most value for your money.
It is not smart to support a dictatorship regime.
-We will not be enslaved as history has previously demonstrated. But we can still be enslaved through the rules of business and money in newer more creative forms.
To ponder: If someday we create AI, and it becomes self aware, and it asks us what it is.. We may not be able to say that it came from something perfect, but wouldn't it be nice if we could at least say it came from something good?