Re: Fw: Red Hat Linux end-of-life update and transition planning

[Eric Bowser <ebowser () i-trap net>]

<uninformed rant>

The purpose of every business is to make money.  I will never disagree
with you there.

Maybe this is the beginning of the revolution for Linux that happened
for the Internet (ARPANET) so many years ago.  Beginning to stop the
free sharing of information, and beginning to see it as a viable
business.  More power to them.

Fedora seems like it will be unstable/difficult to patch/*insert
whatever here* in an intentional effort to extract money from users for
the enterprise version.  I don't debate the business sense behind their
decisions, but they have made a viable OS available for years, gotten
everybody addicted, and then replaced it with your choice of headaches,
or a pay-to-play product.  Don't drug dealers do that?

</uninformed rant>

Maybe I'm way off base here.  I don't have but 2 servers out of almost
50 that run RedHat.  And they're not even production.  I try to remain
independent of the distributor, and build from sources obtained directly
from the author whenever possible.  So take my opinions with a grain of
salt.  I've always been a Slackware or LFS guy myself.  If they choose
to stop supporting their distro, I can always continue to download and
compile myself, that's how I do my updates now anyway.

On Mon, 2003-11-03 at 16:35, Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:
> On Mon, 03 Nov 2003 14:30:41 EST, Eric Bowser said:
> > Basically "Screw OpenSource, we want to make money." 
>
> Well. Yeah.  Take a look at their books:
>
> http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=RHAT&script=410&layout=-6&item_id=450143
>
> Where is the income for supporting the free version?  I don't see it
> anywhere.
>
> Do you see what their "total gain from operations" is for the last quarter?  A
> whole whopping $240K.That's cutting it *damned* close.  $30M in cash flow and
> only $240K profit, a whopping 0.8% margin.
>
> Did I mention it's their first quarter in the black?
>
> Feel free to suggest an alternate *business* model for them to follow,
> that guarantees they can keep paying everybody.
-- 
Eric J. Bowser 
330.658.9858 direct 
330.658.0123 fax 

i-TRAP Internet Security Services 
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