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Fedora Legacy Shutting Down
An anonymous reader writes to pass on the news that the Fedora Legacy project is going away. The project has been providing security updates and critical bugfixes to end-of-life Red Hat and Fedora Core releases. From the article: "In case any of you are not aware, the Fedora Legacy project is in the process of shutting down. The current model for supporting maintenance distributions is being re-examined. In the meantime, we are unable to extend support to older Fedora Core releases as we had planned. As of now, Fedora Core 4 and earlier distributions are no longer being maintained. Discussions... on the #Fedora-Legacy channel have brought to light the fact that certain Fedora Legacy properties (servers) may be going away soon, such as the repository at http://download.fedoralegacy.org and the build server."
You mean, how are Linux fans going to justify Red Hat not supporting the older versions of software that doesn't cost anything? Technically Red Hat doesn't even support the current version of Fedora Core. If you want support for multiple years, buy one of the flavors of Red Hat Enterprise.
Are you going to complain next that Microsoft isn't supporting Vista's beta 2 anymore? It's pretty much the same thing.
#DeleteChrome
Fedora's whole mission is pretty much implement the cutting edge and let people experiment and play with it. The target audience was inteded to be those desktop users/enthusiasts who would jump on the current release anyway, since it is free. If any business saw a distribution like Fedora and thought it a good idea to base their infrastructure on a Fedora Core release, they are now getting basically what they asked for.
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, it's more an acceptance of what people should have perceived all along, Fedora isn't trying to be that kind of distribution. If you want that kind, go to a commercial vendor (RHAT, Novell) or go with something like CentOS or Debian, which have clear missions/policies that align with that sort of usage. Could consider Ubuntu, but I wouldn't be that confident in Canonical yet, but the LTS is at least a stated mission and Canonical has a vested business interest in being considered a serious business worthy option, while Fedora obviously hs no such vested interest. Similarly, I wouldn't use Gentoo or OpenSuSE in those contexts either, their missions are valid, but not in line with common business desires/needs. Debian and CentOS do, and generally end up 'boring' in the eyes of enthusiasts, and Fedora Core, Gentoo, Ubuntu's 6 month releases, etc all are generally more interesting to the enthusiast, but can't provide legacy support and the cutting edge all the time.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
As you point out several times in your post, Fedora is not aimed at enterprise usage. The maintenance work at fedoralegacy wasn't aimed towards the enterprise.
What you seem to be missing is that you're looking at a volunteer supported, non-enterprise effort that is closing down, and somehow comparing that to distributions that are aimed at the enterprise and have enterprise funding to support legacy updates. You also seem to somehow be comparing a distribution that issues a new version every few months with bleeding-edge additions with other distributions that are kept stable (and, those distributions are kept stable specifically because they are aimed at the enterprise).
You're not comparing apples to oranges "in some sense". You're comparing apples to oranges, period.
This is interesting. I've been slowly moving from the Unix world (Sun/Solaris) to Linux for a while. As part of that, we have been porting applications to Fedora/Red Hat. Lately though, I've been more and more impressed with Solaris 10 (and OpenSolaris). Frankly, I don't see much of an incentive anymore to run Linux on a production server. The only thing Linux seems to deliver better at the moment is x86 driver support and desktop apps. While I don't think we'll necessarily stop our efforts to create a more platform neutral set of applications, I suspect we'll be staying on Solaris for some time. Incidentally, I have no trouble receiving patch support for any of Solaris 10, 9 or 8 production servers. I like the longer support time lines that Sun offers (and much of it for free by the way).
Just to point something out.
Just because Fedora Legacy isn't running a patch service any more doesn't mean that those older FC distros are now useless.
The original source of many of those patches are the developers of the software supported by Legacy. Those developers - or other interested third parties - are likely still to develop patches. Those patches can probably be obtained and applied by sys admins who need them.
It just isn't going to be as easy as going to one place and downloading a set of patches, or getting them pushed to your system automatically.
Even on Windows, there are people running projects now that collect Windows patches, put them on a CD or in a bundle and provide a tool to automatically apply them, to make things easier for sys admins who don't want to or can't for some reason use Windows Update Service. I would expect this sort of thing to be done for "orphan" Linux distros to some degree, if it isn't already.
Obviously, as the Legacy project shows, depending a corporate infrastructure on such a service is not wise. But the Legacy situation doesn't mean every distro older than FC5 or FC6 is useless.
Also, even if CentOS goes belly up and there is NO source of RHEL other than Red Hat, well, that's business in the corporate world.
Try getting Windows (or Apple) for free. That's your other choice.
Finally, all this says NOTHING about "Linux for the enterprise". "Enterprises" expect to PAY for their software and their support - not get it free. One advantage Linux has is that you CAN get it for free if you want to and can handle a free OS. But that's not Linux's only advantage. And the other advantages are equally or more important than the simple cost of the OS in monetary terms - even if most CIOs can't comprehend those benefits.
One of the obvious points that you overlooked is that there are enough "second sources" for Linux that an "upgrade" (if not a "migration") is rarely forced. That is not the case in Windows. With Windows, you do what Microsoft says - that's it. That is not the case with Red Hat, SUSE, or anybody else.
The only thing we have here with the Legacy issue is some whining from people who didn't understand the distro they were getting or were using it in inappropriate circumstances.
The proper response: deal with it.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!