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Red Hat Software Businesses Education Linux Business

Red Hat News: Edu Prices, Progeny Support for 7.X 221

Posted by timothy from the tip-of-the-fedora dept.
thx2001r writes "According to News.com, Matthew Szulik (perhaps driven by recent slashdot questions in this regard) of Red Hat has set educational pricing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation ($25 per year for students) and (RHEL AS) server ($50 per year for the schools). Here are the details of the versions available at educational discounts." And for business users wary of Red Hat's high-priced Enterprise version (and happy using an older version), iroberts writes "Beginning January 1, 2004, Progeny will offer software updates for users of Red Hat(R) Linux(R) 7.2 and 7.3. Pricing is $5 per machine per month; or a flat rate of $2,500 per month for unlimited machines. The Fedora Legacy Project is discussing how this will impact their work."
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Red Hat News: Edu Prices, Progeny Support for 7.X More

Red Hat News: Edu Prices, Progeny Support for 7.X

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  • Why pay? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fdawg ( 22521 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @05:45PM (#7622357)
    I still dont understand why we cannot distribute the cds. If Redhat does have an 18 month product release cycle, why cant someone just post the ISO? I thought the GPL allowed for that kind of thing.

    • Re:Why pay? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Trigun ( 685027 )
      because they will start putting in non-gpl'ed software as well, and charging for that.

      Sure, the OS is free, but the Red Hat ultimate admin controller dohickey costs $2500.00. You want the CD, you compile from source and make your own distro.

      • True enough. But they haven't done that yet, AFAIK, so I'm not sure why people don't just redistribute the ISOs.

      • Re:Why pay? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by GOD_ALMIGHTY ( 17678 ) <curt DOT johnson AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @06:13PM (#7622667) Homepage
        Do you have some proof of this?

        As far as I remember, RedHat has never shipped non-OpenSource software on there core disks. They have included supplemental stuff, which has been clearly marked as such and is never needed to install or use RedHat. RedHat has actually been one of the best contributors for admin tools to the Open Source community. Take a look at their PostgreSQL tools, all Open Source, which ship with their Postgres based DB Server. Unlike Suse, they never used any gimmicks like shipping a closed source admin tool to keep the iso's from being copied. Debian is the only other major distro that has upheld the Open Source community spirit as well as RedHat in my opinion, and Debian is non-profit.

        I'm making that statement on the amount of work contributed to the community balanced against "offenses" to the Open Source ethos. RedHat's track record does not deserve such harsh cynicism, I think they've earned the benefit of the doubt.

        If RedHat is changing this in their new Enterprise class distro's I'd like to know, but quite frankly I've yet to see RedHat do anything that wasn't friendly to the Open Source community. BTW, you know if any other distro had contributed as much as RedHat has they'd crow a lot more about it.

        For the record, I've been using various distros since '95 and though my memory isn't always the best, but you're going to have to dig up some cold hard facts to change my opinion of RedHat.

        • Thank you (Score:4, Insightful)

          by pantherace ( 165052 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @06:42PM (#7622908)
          Someone else who knows how they operate, and is still open.

          They may be distro specific (kudzu) but they have always been open-source.

          Now what they are doing is using trademarks & support. You can redistribute, use, etc etc Red Hat Enterprise, but if you don't pay for it, and/or if you put it on more than one computer (period, they had a problem of multiple installs, and the one with the problem was always the paid for one.) If you do however, you can't call it RedHat, due to trademarks. Also, no binary RPMs are provided to non-paying customers, but source RPMS are.

          I would add in gentoo, as it is also all based on OSS/GPL. It is also one of the easiest to use with new software that often there isn't a rh/deb/etc package, and if there isn't writing ebuilds is easier than writing rpms. (Honestly can't comment on debs, except by heresay which is that they are tougher than both.)

          Slack may be included as well, but I can't say I am positive about that.

          Red Hat has always been a good Open Source Company. I always figured it would come down to a RH ("Always Open") vs Caldera (bundle proprietary) some time in the US, just not in the way it has.

          • I thought about Gentoo and Slack, which is why I qualified my statement by balancing contributions with "offenses". Slack has contributed as much $$ or code as RedHat has, as far as I know. RedHat has kept many really good people hired and working on stuff that goes back into the community.

            Gentoo was in the same boat as Slack as far as I'm concerned. Their emerge stuff seems to be a very popular contribution, but I don't think the amount of contributions that Gentoo has made is as large as RedHat.
          • Kudzu isn't dist-specific, it's available in Debian, too.
          • I would add in gentoo, as it is also all based on OSS/GPL. It is also one of the easiest to use with new software that often there isn't a rh/deb/etc package, and if there isn't writing ebuilds is easier than writing rpms. (Honestly can't comment on debs, except by heresay which is that they are tougher than both.)

            Just FYI, making .deb packages is extremely easy; making good .debs is a little bit harder, and making Debian Policy-compliant .debs is a lot more difficult.

            Any tarball which you can do "./conf
        • Unlike Suse, they never used any gimmicks like shipping a closed source admin tool to keep the iso's from being copied.

          Argh! How many times is this FUD going to be repeated on slashdot? YaST is NOT CLOSED SOURCE! It simply has the same sort of license agreement as RHEL, i.e. you cannot redistribute it -- FOR MONEY -- with the SuSE branding left in place. So you can still copy any number of disks for your buddies, but you can't sell them.

          Sheesh.

          • Argh! How many times is this FUD going to be repeated on slashdot? YaST is NOT CLOSED SOURCE! It simply has the same sort of license agreement as RHEL, i.e. you cannot redistribute it -- FOR MONEY -- with the SuSE branding left in place. So you can still copy any number of disks for your buddies, but you can't sell them.

            What? The YaST license is listed on GNU.org as a non-Free license. It's not listed on opensource.org as an OSS license. Including it in another distro would restrict how you could distribu
            • Exactly. Read the license. To wit, from /usr/share/doc/packages/COPYRIGHT.english on my SuSE 8.2 workstation...

              3. Dissemination

              It is forbidden to reproduce or distribute data carriers which have
              been reproduced without authorisation for payment without the prior
              written consent of SuSE Linux AG or SuSE Linux. Distribution of
              the YaST 2 programme, its sources, whether amended or unamended in full
              or in part thereof, and the works derived thereof for a charge require
              the prior written co

              • You can't freely redistribute YaST. If you charge, even to cover costs, you have to get explicit permission from Suse. This makes it closed source. There are plenty of "source available" closed source apps. Open Source means that you won't restrict the user's rights to modify and redistribute. This is covered in section 1 of the Open Source Definition.

                Looking at sites like linuxiso.org or cheapbytes.com, you'll see RedHat 9 iso's but no Suse iso's other than live evals. Cheapbytes sells "Pink Tie" linux th
                • Sigh. The word "freely" means that you DON'T CHARGE for it. Is English not your native language? YOU CAN FREELY -- AS IN, NOT TAKE MONEY FOR -- DISTRIBUTE SUSE LINUX DISTRIBUTION DISCS. I don't know about the rest. I wasn't talking about the rest, and neither were you originally.

                  Again, sigh. Apparently, I have been trolled, but for those following along at home, I hope the point is now clear.
    • Because they have included non-GPL software in the distribution. Technically, they've been doing this for a while (they no include Intel's NIC drive, e100, in addition to the GPL version, eepro. I have no idea what the other stuff is however, I strongly suspect that its small stuff.

      I'm still not sure what I'm going to do, but paying $300 per server isn't an option for us.

      • The e100 driver is part of the mainline kernel. At issue are proprietary software products -- like realplayer, and motif, and things like that.
    • Not all of the software on the CD is GPL. The GPL specifically says that occupying the same media does not cause closed source to become GPL.

      If you want to distribute Red Hat's software, you need to first remove the Red Hat pieces that are not GPL. You are free to share Red Hat's version of the kernel, for example.
    • It's mostly due to trademark issues, but partly due to includind non-GPL software as others have indicated. The artwork (the bluecurve metatheme) and logos are trademarked. My understanding was that redisitributing exact copies was fine, but some people were distributing modified CDs which were still branded as Red Hat Linux. The trademarks were then used to force people to either strip the trademarked stuff and rename it (hence pink tie linux on cheapbytes) or ship unmodified cds.

    • Re:Why pay? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Nezer ( 92629 )
      Becasue the 'official' iso images of RHL are thier copyright and they choose not to allow distribution of the iso. Thier CD layout is a new work of art and therefore isn't covered under the the same license(s) of the software found within.

      As RH makes the binary packages publicly available (up to RHEL), which is not a requirement of the GPL but they were nice to the community in this respect. Becasue of this there's absolutly NOTHING stopping you me or anyone else from assembling our own iso layout and di

    • Re:Why pay? (Score:5, Informative)

      by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @06:38PM (#7622866) Journal
      It's the RedHat trademarks that are used to control re-distribution.

      If you want to get the source, strip out the RH trademarks, compile/build everything, etc., you are free to so do.

    • Re:Why pay? (Score:2, Informative)

      by geekp0wer ( 516841 )
      Write legal@redhat.com for a copy of their license agreement for ES or AS. I have a feeling that its mostly intimidation and not really stopping anything.

    • ...has a complete copy of Red Hat Enterprise Advanced Server v3 available for download via bittorrent.

      You're not supposed to distribute RedHat products unless you remove all their logos, but otherwise there are no redistribution restrictions (but the suprnova copy does appear to be in violation).

      I guess that tells you where I stand.

  • I guess I'll be going for it... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dreadlord ( 671979 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @05:47PM (#7622378) Journal
    ...because of up2date, it's just too good to manage to live without it, it automatically detects updates for installed software, downloads, and installs them, works great when a security patch is released.
    I remember that it saved me the hassle when sendmail bug was discovered a while back...
    • Cant someone just post the updates on a public ftp server, then add an apt for rpm type script in the cron job? Would save us all a few bucks this way.
    • wait until it OOPS' your kernel on your most critical machine. you'll change your mind then.

      beside apt-get works better, and is free
    • You can do the same thing with URPMI on Mandrake, and I think URPMI is a lot better and easier to configure, frankly....

      Chris
    • You might want to look at APT for RPM - that and Synaptic and you have a nice GUI for installing packages, with dependancy resolution.

      And since Redhat is moving to have the APT repositories for Fedora, it makes it even easier to update code.

      AND up2date in Fedora supportes APT respositories, as well.
    • Slackware has it's own automatable update mechanism also, swaret [swaret.org]. It even lets you update from other sources, such as linuxpackages.net or random sites from the mirror list (or of course to just use the official slackware ftp site if you prefer.)

  • Linux in a Lab (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Matrix272 ( 581458 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @05:47PM (#7622384)
    I've been using Red Hat 8 in a lab setting with 16 workstations and 1 server for over a year now, with no complaints ... well, no BIG ones.

    I've only been using 8 because it's more user-friendly than 7.3, and the software still works on 8 (it doesn't on 9... still testing Fedora). Of course, I asked them about Educational pricing a few weeks ago, but they never bothered to give me a REAL price... they actually told me that for 17 computers, it would be over $3500 per year. So, of course, once I spend a couple weeks testing Fedora and making sure almost everything works on it, they announce this, and now it looks like I might not have to upgrade after all.

    BTW, I'm VERY happy with Fedora so far. It's very user-friendly (priority #1), secure (#2), and compatible with the software (#3). However, the University [psu.edu] I work for is preparing to have a meeting for which version of Linux to standardize on and get support for... Red Hat (I'm assuming Enterprise), SuSe, or Fedora. Does anyone think SuSe would be a better choice than Fedora? I'm not really even considering RHE...
    • I think Fedora would be a frustrating choice. There is no commercial support for it, and it will undergo major releases twice a year. I don't know anything about Suse, other than their educational licensing might be cheaper than Red Hat's. Is $50 a year per server really too much? I forget if RHEL 3.0 is based of RHL 8 or 9, but either way, it's very user friendly.

    • Re:Linux in a Lab (Score:3, Informative)

      by rsax ( 603351 )
      Does anyone think SuSe would be a better choice than Fedora?

      Short answer: yes. Since you are testing Redhat 8 and you mentioned that you aren't considering Redhat Enterprise then you don't care about long-term vendor support; a SuSE release is supported for 2 years. You can easily purchase one copy of SuSE professional for $80 and install it as many times as you want wherever you want.

      It's very user-friendly (priority #1), secure (#2), and compatible with the software (#3).

      SuSE is all of the above. S

      • Short answer: yes. Since you are testing Redhat 8 and you mentioned that you aren't considering Redhat Enterprise then you don't care about long-term vendor support; a SuSE release is supported for 2 years. You can easily purchase one copy of SuSE professional for $80 and install it as many times as you want wherever you want.

        It's not the long-term vendor support I'm looking for... it's the community support, the brand name, and the program support that I'm more concerned about. I've never called Red Ha
        • I've been using up2date on RH8, which I really like. Does SuSE have something similar, that will keep it all updated automatically? (I've never used it, and I haven't ever been able to justify a $80 box set before.)

          Yes it does. It's called SUSE YOU (YaST Online Update), scroll all the way down here [suse.com] for their description. Like I've mentioned before in this thread you can create a local ftp or http mirror with all the suse packages and do as many installs without paying anything. I can justify paying $80 to

    • Suse is a bad choice because it is not completely open source, and if you don't care about OSS... then just use a non-free *nix such as OSX or Solaris.

    • Why not consider RHE? (Score:4, Informative)

      by emil ( 695 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @08:08PM (#7623736)

      It says quite clearly in the firstboot app when you load RHE that redistribution of RHE is allowed as long as you remove all Red Hat logos.

      I downloaded RHE from suprnova.org. I like the new LVM changes very much.

    • I've been using Red Hat 8 in a lab setting with 16 workstations and 1 server for over a year now, with no complaints ... well, no BIG ones.

      You should check out radmind [radmind.org].

      However, the

      University [psu.edu] I work for is preparing to have a meeting for which version of Linux to standardize on and get support for... Red Hat (I'm assuming Enterprise), SuSe, or Fedora.

      That's interesting. So's the University [umich.edu] that I work for. Some people have even suggested working on a distribution supported by universities, e.g., EduNix.

    • I run a lab with 16 machines. I'm very seriously considering phasing out redhat in our lab for a number of reasons. I'm considering replacing it with SuSE.
      1. The subscription model for up2date is prohibitive.
      2. I'm a KDE user.
      3. SuSE Professional comes with more "stuff" than RedHat (at least 7.3/8 and 9 as far as I can tell).
      4. The integration testing of SuSE seems better than Redhat.
      5. I can't tolerate a 1 year end of life for my software (at least on my servers).
      6. YAST is consistent and works better than th

  • Free Enterprise Route (Score:5, Informative)

    by DA-MAN ( 17442 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @05:48PM (#7622398) Homepage
    I'm surprised there hasn't been much info in the way of RedHat Enterprise Rebuild Projects. There is both a mailing list and a few projects that have succeeded.

    http://www.whiteboxlinux.org/ was the first freely distributable RedHat Enterprise 3.0 Rebuild
    http://www.caosity.net/ was the second project to finish and distribute.

    The mailing list archive is @ http://www.mail-archive.com/rhel-rebuild-l@uibk.ac .at/

    Frankly, all it takes is a quick script to download, rpmbuild --rebuild updatepkg.src.rpm and install. I would recommend against doing this on machines that will be running Oracle or what not, but for most uses, this is an awesome approach the likes of which is impossible with proprietary software.

  • Good move (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ActionPlant ( 721843 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @05:49PM (#7622400) Homepage
    Open source is affordable again.

    Okay, so that sounds weird. Specifically, I was disappointed when RedHat announced that 9 was the last of the bunch. Not that I didn't understand, but I've relied solidly on them for some time.

    There was no way I could afford Enterprise, at least not up front; after all, I run a very small personal server. With this announcement, it's a good feeling to know that I'll have future upgrades to look forward to and not have to pay through the nose to make them happen. Here I was looking for a new open source distro (you know, planning for the future) and the RedHat team came through again.

    Bravo!

    Damon,

  • Nice news. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by robpoe ( 578975 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @05:49PM (#7622404)
    I have several customers (as well as my own servers) who run Linux web / mail servers (many of them on RH 7.3).

    7.3 is a strong, stable platform (IMO) and updates for $5 /mo are well worth it.

  • Free Software will have support if demand exists (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @05:52PM (#7622433)
    Progeny proves that with Free Software, even if the original vendor goes out of business, or stops supperting it, if there is demand for support, you won't be left out in the cold. This is a very geed thing.

  • Does that include.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by kutuz_off ( 159540 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @05:53PM (#7622456)
    SCO's discount student rate of 642$ per Linux installation?

  • Mind share is important espec. for education (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Steve 'Rim' Jobs ( 728708 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @05:54PM (#7622464) Journal
    Though todays announcement shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's followed Red Hat over the last year, I think it was a very poor move.

    Yes, I do understand producing their "Red Hat Linux" product was expensive, and hurt their bottom line. They should have never split their product in two to begin with. Maintaining both RHL and Enterprise Linux was too much of a burden on the company. It reeks of bad management, much like the Mozilla project does (They are trying to develop no less than three different browsers at the moment, possibly more depending on how you count--and Netscape just cut them lose, so they're severely understaffed... you'd think they'd make consolidation efforts--but this is another tirade).

    What they should have done is modularize their base product, and sell add-ons. They retain all of their users, all of their mind share, only have to develop one product, AND it can act as a stepping stone into your Enterprise-level services. Hell! They even had the infrastructure to do a single core product all laid out with Red Hat Network. Sell an Enterprise Web Server channel add-on to Red Hat Linux 10 for Enterprise-level prices, and so on. It would have been beautiful. Really.

    It would have also provided their Enterprise customers with ten-times the amount of testing of the core OS. This is not to be underestimated. Much as Linus renames a kernel from e.g. 2.5.79 to 2.6.0-test1 when he wants (free!) wider testing, Red Hat now has a user base one-tenth the size to "test" their releases on. And problems that aren't caught in relase QA (many just can't be) will now HAVE to affect (high-)paying customers. There's no free users to take 90% of the falls.

    Red Hat produced the de facto Linux distribution in the United States AND they were in the black. There was nothing to stop them. They provided a free, high quality alternative OS. People were switching to Linux, and switching to Red Hat. It was working. But apparently not fast enough for them.

    Windows users have no highly visible, high quality alternative now. (No, it's NOT necessary to chime in with your favorite distribution.) What's good for Linux was good for Red Hat, and this is unquestionably bad for Linux, medium-term, at least.

    Fedora does NO ONE any good. It's pseudo-managed by Red Hat, but with no guarantees, no support, no Red Hat Network, no Enterprise add-ons, and regular Joe-Schmoe developers fucking it up (cf. Debian). And the mix of open development and corporate bureaucracy, neither with any vision, is sure to pull and tug at it in no general direction, making it nothing more than a poor Debian clone. I wonder how long until Red Hat cut's it lose completely.

    • Re:Mind share is important espec. for education (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bobaferret ( 513897 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @06:17PM (#7622702)
      Yes, I do understand producing their "Red Hat Linux" product was expensive, and hurt their bottom line.

      um..no...It was profitable, ie it did not hurt their bottom line. It just wasn't growing fast enough. I belive this was stated in the interview here on slashdot. They maintain the idea that Growth is what is important, not profitability. A steady income won't make you rich, you need growth so your stock price will rise. I think the harm that they have done through confusing the community will far out weigh the money they weren't losing to the RHL division.

      • OK, if that is true then they really HAVE shot themselves in the foot.

        Microsoft, Intel and AMD got to where they were because they sold first to the low end then gradually worked their way up, without abandoning their roots. For one, RH stands to loose their brand recognition because IMO they've never truly established themselves as high end player and I think SuSE will eat them alive on the low end and the high end.

        I also object to killing a solidly profitable yet slowly growing product simply because i

    • Enterprise Add-ons. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by _Sprocket_ ( 42527 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @06:22PM (#7622740)


      What they should have done is modularize their base product, and sell add-ons. They retain all of their users, all of their mind share, only have to develop one product, AND it can act as a stepping stone into your Enterprise-level services. Hell! They even had the infrastructure to do a single core product all laid out with Red Hat Network. Sell an Enterprise Web Server channel add-on to Red Hat Linux 10 for Enterprise-level prices, and so on. It would have been beautiful. Really.

      ...

      Fedora does NO ONE any good. It's pseudo-managed by Red Hat, but with no guarantees, no support, no Red Hat Network, no Enterprise add-ons...

      As I understand it, the whole Enterprise Linux push was not about adding in additional software. It was more about creating a slow-moving target for enterprise software developers like Veritas and Oracle. Developers could feel more comfortable that whatever product they were pushing would be deployed on the same platform in their customer's data center as was used to develop the product.

      Sure - there were also some tweaks and bits of different software involved. But that didn't seem to be the push.

      But then, I never looked under the hood of RedHat Enterprise Linux. Maybe the salespitch I heard didn't tell the entire story.
    • Yes, I do understand producing their "Red Hat Linux" product was expensive, and hurt their bottom line.

      I disagree.

      I fail to see why redhat thinks they need to charge anywhere from $350 to thousands of dollars, per year, per cpu, for a collection of software of which they contributed at most 5%. This is something slashdot readers will eventually have to come to terms with and accept as fact: RedHat is fucking you. Period. They are flat-out lying to you by saying that they need to charge thousands of do

  • $5/month? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @05:58PM (#7622512) Homepage
    $5/month might not seem like much, but... if I was getting that much from everyone using the binary updates I'm building for FreeBSD, I'd be very very happy.

    IMHO, anyone who thinks it costs anywhere near that much to provide binary updates is still thinking in VC-inflated, height-of-the-bubble dollars.

  • Advantage of Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @06:00PM (#7622524)
    Even if you stop supporting your product someone else can easily step in and support it instead. Nice to see the theory in action.
  • You might be more interested in using Fedora [redhat.com] than paying 25 bucks a month for RHEW. It's what I use and it seems just as stable as any of those other linux distros out there (debian, slackware, etc.) Not to mention it is more on the bleeding edge than Red Hat's enterprise products, making it ideal for desktop use. Sure, a new version comes out every 6 months, but the upgrade is free!

    RHEL is only for servers and workstations that perform *mission critical* tasks and have specialized requirements.
  • From earlier leaked reports it sounded like WS would cost $25, AS $50 or you could get a site license for $2500 for WS and distribute to your staff/faculty/students.

    Nope.

    The $25 and $50 price is for individual (that is, student/faculty/staff) academic purchase only. If you're an institution, it's $2,500 for a base package (so you can run your own RHN and save redhat's bandwidth) and then add on WS at $25 each and AS for $50 each -- OR -- add on a site license for $7/FTE for WS and $7/FTE for servers.

    • Still all confusing as heck. I can't tell if an institution can opt to buy just the individual packages without the base package. All makes no sense. You'd think redhat would want people to run their own satellite rhn server to keep the load and bandwidth off of theirs...
    • I called them up yesterday and my understanding was the $2500 also included iso's and an absurd number of free licenses for students to download WS for free. They also mentioned that faculty could use the iso's for *personal* use as well however as you mentioned ($7+$7)*FTE for university own equipment.

      Incidentally, I got the ($7+$7)*FTE speech as well.
      It is obvious they'd like universities just to pay $14*FTE as it is actually vaguely in the noise for a large university. However..

      It makes absolutely

    • It it were only $10K, we'd probably do it.... For us, even just paying the $7/FTE would get us something on the order of $50,000. There's no way we'll pay that much. It's more than we pay for Solaris, AIX, and IRIX combined.

  • Student run RedHat ES ftp sites (Score:3, Interesting)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @06:05PM (#7622587) Journal
    Maybe some students who pay the $25 or $50 a year will start running ftp sites (and mirrors) with the RedHat generated upgrade rpms for the non-RedHat software that is GPL'd.

    RedHat just keeps trying to sell stuff that eventually has trouble selling.
  • I paid RH $60/year to keep my RH8 server up2date, and use the service religiously. I'd have kept paying RH that fee ad infinitum.

    But I can't help but feel abandoned. It feels like my choices are to upgrade to Enterprise, which is more than I need and expensive, or find another distro, which I don't want to do either. It kind of pisses me off, because I chose RH because of up2date (among other things).

    And now Progeny can keep me up to date for $5/month. OK, I'll consider it, but that's still 10 times w

    • 1 year = 12 months
      Progeny cost = $5/month
      RHN cost = $60/year

      12 months x $5/month = $60/year

      Did I miss something on the website that's screwing up my math?
      • Yes, you missed that for $60/yr RH would send you a package, too. Progeny will only make updates available. That's a lot less work, since there are no development costs (of new versions).
        • No, really, i don't.

          What do you mean, RH would send a package? Do you mean they'd release new software, or newer versions of software?

          For the most part, RHN gave me a lot of backported fixes, but rarely (if ever) a new version of the software itself.

          I think I'm getting lost in the semantics here.
          • RH provided two things: updates and new releases. Your $60/yr gave you both. The new releases will not be provided by Progeny. If you look at the work that RH did, I'd bet (and I do this for a living) making new releases was much more time consuming than the updates. New releases have development time, but they also have time dedicated to physical things, like packages, CD-ROMs, etc. They cost $$, too.

    • Re:Still feeling abandoned by RedHat (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Your math skills aside, I completely agree with your sentiments. I was completely willing to pay RH $60/year to access updates via up2date. I feel as a home user, $60 is completely fair.

      I decided to cut bait and go with SuSE 9.0, which I find that I like better. They have basically the same update mechanism and there doesn't seem to be a maintenance fee (yet?).

  • Sigh... (Score:3, Funny)

    by tds67 ( 670584 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @06:08PM (#7622621)
    Red Hat, however, encountered a backlash among education users when it stopped making its corporate product available for free.

    In higher education, apparently only widgets cost money.

  • Can anyone find and point me to a definitive package listing for the various flavors of RHEL?

    I don't mean a relative listing, like a table of information that includes a short line of "includes this, this, and that" I mean a complete listing of all packages and versions, such as was provided with previous versions of Red Hat Linux.

    I know Red Hat Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are different products, but how can one make an informed choice about the three versions of RHEL without knowing exactly what p
  • What I don't understand is why they blew up their RHL line without having really throught through the structure of the Fedora project a bit better. I headed over their all excited, but ended up not liking the contribution model much.

    As it is, it's still awkward to contribute to the distro, they may are may not be using these giant queues, etc etc. I actually think that the fact that RH engineers are still involved means it could have really rocked, but the at the moment I don't have the greatest of feeling
  • Maybe it is me, but I don't understand what everyone is complaining about... People are mad because Redhat move their free corporate run distro, to a free community run distro... This is what is praised about in debian, that it is community run(that and apt)...

    Fedora is potentially everything and more of the free Redhat Linux distro... give them some time, but I have faith this is going to be a GOOD move.
  • If Fedora would offer me a path to upgrade from RH 9 to Fedora, I would.

    If I have to rebuild a new OS, and move my webserver to that, then I will probably go with Debian or Slack.

    Can anybody list the distros that will allow version upgrades both remotely and without having to format a drive?

    Thanks.

    -S

    • APT-GET DIST-UPGRADE (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @11:17PM (#7625058)
      Here is exactly how to do this:

      1.Get apt-rpm

      http://apt4rpm.sourceforge.net/

      2.This following will be the contents of /etc/apt/sources.list.d/fedora.list:

      #--

      # Apt sources.list from http://www.xades.com/proj/fedora_repos.html

      # Fedora Core

      rpm http://download.fedora.us/fedora fedora/1/i386 os updates
      rpm http://download.fedora.us/fedora fedora/1/i386 stable unstable testing

      # Livna 3rd party packages with questionable licenses -- use at your own risk

      rpm http://rpm.livna.org/ fedora/1/i386 stable unstable testing

      # Dag Apt Repository for Red Hat Fedora Core 1

      rpm http://apt.sw.be redhat/fc1/en/i386 dag

      #--

      Now do apt-get dist-upgrade

      And you will have Fedora Core 1 from Red Hat 9.

  • Red Hat 7.X series support ends as of december 31st. That's less than a month away. I had one production 7.2 machine, and its been upgraded as of two days ago. Since Red Hat announced end of support, anyone running 7.X who gave a shit has been thinking about what to upgrade their systems to, and how to get it done by the end of December. And since that date is so close, a lot of those systems are no longer potential progeny support customers.

    Now, maybe they announced this awhile back, and I am just now hea

  • Was Fedora even viable to begin with? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @10:25PM (#7624737) Homepage


    Oh dear.

    After insulting the intelligence of their entire developer base (not to mention openly scoffing at their hard work and commitment) did Red Hat honestly expect people to flock to Fedora in droves? You've got to be kidding me..We're penguins, not friggin' LEMMINGS.

    The whole damn thing with Red Hat stinks like ass and catfish, to the point where I will intentionally avoid doing what Red Hat would like for me to do. I'd even go so far as to say that anyone who pursues contributing code to Fedora is performing the equivalent of dropping their pants, spreading their cheeks, and hanging a sign on their nutsack saying "FREE AS IN BEER" with an arrow pointing up. Anybody who comes along, particularly Red Hat, is gonna take advantage of your willingness to get porked.

    By {participating in/contributing to} Red Hat's 'Cousin Oliver' pee-on project, you're effectively agreeing to be kicked out of a playground you helped build, and forced to make do with a cat-shit filled sandbox down the street. Red Hat is our work, not theirs.

    I can't speak for anyone but myself, but, if someone comes along and says "Oh, hey, thanks for building our skyscraper, kids! It's really quite lovely. As a thank you, we've graciously provided you with a cat-shit-filled sandbox down the street so you can continue making us rich, giving us beautiful things while getting nothing in return, not even the right to say you contribute directly to the project you helped build. Have a nice day, security will escort you to the parking lot."

    Remind yourself that without us, they wouldn't even have a product to sell in the first place.

    My advice? Let Red Hat go stale. Literally. Don't make an effort to contribute to Red Hat's distrib, or any other distrib which Red Hat directly benefits from (i.e. Fedora)..Move your efforts into helping build a competing distribution, one who's popularity would ultimately detract from Red Hat's dick-play. Ultimately, you cant prevent them from taking your work, obviously, but you can sure as hell make life difficult for them.

    I never thought i'd say this, but, fuck this sandbox bullshit. I'm going Debian.

    Cheers,

    • Re:Was Fedora even viable to begin with? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by smitty45 ( 657682 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @10:53PM (#7624909)
      "Red Hat is our work, not theirs."

      1- Bullshit.
      2- don't do that

      Keep pretending that RedHat has, until now, all about the community, making things free, and not out to make money. While you're at it, make sure you pretend that throwing a desk on a kid's throat is self-defense, and that the easter bunny will bring you a hanakuh gift, too.

      The fact is, RedHat did nothing more than raise prices and change their direction. You don't think Suse and others will do the same ? RedHat has made more inroads in terms of credibility than any other distro, and that means good news, whether you admit it or not.

      Don't be so dramatic. Fedora *is* RH9, and for the people who had support contracts for their enterprise version, nothing has changed. Complain all you want, but don't be so hyperbolic about it.
    • The Fedora product features newer code and is not encumbered by the copyright issues that caused odd divergences such as PinkTie to spring forth.

      As to your assumption of RedHat living off of community work, note that much of this work (GNOME, etc) was funded (in)directly by RedHat. It is they who have often given to you, not the other way around.

      You don't seem to understand what RHAS is and how it is marketed in any case. Since the emphasis has been placed on stability over freshness, the distro would likel



      • Hi Ars, :)

        The thing that pisses me off about Red Hat is not that they're trying to make money...Hell, God bless them, they're doing what alot of other companies can't...turn a profit. :) However...

        My beef with Red Hat comes in the form of their moving the Red Hat name out of reach of the Red Hat developer .

        I don't know about the rest of you, but the fact that i've been a contributor to Red Hat's distrib since May of 1998 was not only something I was personally proud of, it was something I put on my
        • and RedHat had no name recognition back then in 1998, either, but you put it on your resume back then. How is Fedora any different ? And for what reason would you have to remove it ?

          This sounds like more whining about nothing. You HAD no "rug" to be pulled with redhat, only one that you imagined.

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