No More Free Updates For Red Hat

An anonymous user wrote in to tell us (and Timothy called RH and confirmed, this change was made a few weeks ago) that you no longer can Freely and Anonymously use Red Hat's Update Agent to download updated package DBs, and update packages. You must register, and pay $9.95 for the service. Of course you can still update manually, but how long before other services pop up to take its place? And Debian still does apt without me having to tell them where I live. This is unfortunate, but not unsurprising. I want RH to make a buck too, but this seems like a pretty crappy way to do it. Update: 03/19 03:21 PM by T : An unnamed reader points to this FAQ on the change, too.

Re:Red Hat Network was never going to be free....

The issue is not RHN. RHN is irrelevant to the vast majority of Slashdot readers, who don't need the services provided by RHN. The issue is up2date no longer working anonymously. Even Microsoft gives you free updates via their update agent.

So let's see: Red Hat is going to make themselves harder to install security patches on than Windows. Duh. Like that's smart. (Insert sound of Red Hat putting pistol to head, pulling trigger).

Apparently Red Hat believes that, since they have so much marketshare, they can make their Linux harder to use than competing Linux distributions while retaining market share. That doesn't make sense to anybody with half a brain, but (duh) nobody ever accused Red Hat of anything except a lot of luck.

-E

Re:More than just US$9.95

Priority updates - RedHat could hypothetically decide to offer updates via the update agent service before they're available via FTP. Depending on how this gets done, it could be delibrate (such as it appearing on the update agent a week before FTP) or just an artifact of bandwidth and priority (it may appear on the FTP site as soon as the update agent starts pushing, but connection limits and mirroring delays may mean it's not readily available until a day or two later).

The majority of released updates to Red Hat Linux are fixes for security holes. Since the release of Red Hat 7.0, Red Hat has released 39 security fixes [redhat.com], 15 other bug fixes [redhat.com], and one package enhancement [redhat.com].

Many would find it ethically questionable for Red Hat, or any other software manufacturer, to deliberately withhold known-good security updates from the majority of its users for any length of time. Red Hat, of course, has no financial or legal obligation to non-paying users; the question is one of good will. Red Hat receives updates from upstream software maintainers at no cost, because the upstream maintainers want their products to be secure and useful. To refrain from passing along the good will, in order to maintain the value of a paid service, seems inherently to be an act of questionable, if not ill, motive.

Furthermore, there is the matter of reputation. Many security-conscious users and sysadmins already hold Red Hat in less than the highest esteem -- because Red Hat's releases have a history of installing unnecessary and potentially risky software by default; and because Red Hat appears to trade off security for ease-of-use for the novice, when novices are the users in greatest need of help with security. Some outside the Linux user base take these problems to be marks on the reputation of Linux at large. Any move on Red Hat's part which further worsens the security of Red Hat systems on the Net -- even poorly-maintained ones operated by novices -- will do Red Hat's reputation, and Linux's, more harm.

All in all, I suspect that Red Hat would do more good for its product's reputation, its users, and for the Internet at large, by making it as easy as possible for all its users to make and keep their systems secure. So far, Red Hat has not -- I repeat, has not -- withheld security updates from non-paying users in order to promote a paid service. That is a good state of affairs; not the best possible, but certainly not a bad one. Let's hope things get better, not worse.

Re:Bad form.

"Even Microsoft doesn't charge for it's incremental updates..."

Sure it does. It just calls them new OSes. What do you think Windows 98 SE was?

I see it like this...

$9.95 is considerably less than I charge for one hour's time. Pretending that downloads of files over either their network service or plain ol' FTP, then a single weekly invocation of this program is far, far, far cheaper than having me do the work by hand.

I would never *personally* use this, as I prefer to do things "my way" but you can bet in a minute I would reccomend this to clients. If there's a problem, they're going to have to call me anyway, but why bother if it works? I set up a cron job and let it be.

I say, good for Red Hat. Let's give this a fair shake.

Enforced contributions...

With all the folks who can't manage to put their money where their mouth is, I'd just consider $9 my contribution to open source.

Oh please. Good for RH.

This is what's called a SERVICE.
They are *not* charging you for updates, new versions, etc. THat's still free.

They are charging for a specific SERVICE they are providing to keep your systems updated automatically. If that service isn't worth money to you, and you'd rather do it your own way, that's absolutely fine.

Re:Enforced contributions...

They're a company, they're no longer in a situation where they are being handed free money whenever they need it, and all these downloads cost them money. MS can afford not to charge because they take all their money up front. RH gives you the stuff for free to begin with, but that auto-update service must be a real killer for bandwidth, so you pay for the privilege. I'm guessing this isn't a profit-generating move so much as a play to break even on the bandwidth costs for this service.

I wouldn't be surprised if the institutions we use as mirrors for distros didn't mirror this service as well, eventually, some of them for free, because it's still legal for them to do so, but you know how crowded their connections get. So you'll be paying for speed with your big bad ten bucks.

The local trolls are right, the wording of the story is a classic troll itself: social engineering to incite a negative reaction.

-jpowers

Re:bug-free software (OT!)

I keep hearing this--hearing that bugs are inevitable, and that bug-free software is impossible...Check out this article for proof to the contrary.

Even the shuttle software-meisters - fantastic job though they do - aren't 100% bug free. According to the linked article, "The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors." Fantastic, amazing, well-done, but not perfect.

We have become FAR too accepting of bugs in commercial software. It's only because we accept it that the companies can get away with it.

It's not just a question of accepting it...it's a question of paying for it, in time and dollars.

They say "Fast, cheap, good - pick two", but it's more like pick one. The Space Shuttle avionics code has taken an enormous effort of time and dollars. They're still using machines with ferrite core memory, because a hardware change would mean massive software changes; try floating that idea to your boss - "We can't upgrade the server because doing so might introduce bugs. We have to stick with that 25 MHz '486 running NetBSD 0.9."

Admittedly, a lot of the upgrading going on is for the sake of flash, not substance; if we could beat it into PHB's heads that reliability is more important than special effects and dancing paperclips, we could proceed with greater focus.

Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

Red Hat Network was never going to be free....

It was free during the trial period while they worked the bugs out. It was never going to be a free server. I knew it was going to be $10/month ages ago.

But, each person gets one free system on the network. So if all you run is a Red Hat workstation you don't have to spend anything. Only people with multiple systems do.

I can see the benefits of RHN. I like the single console view, and I like being able to push updates to clients, but at $10/month/workstation that can get pricey if you have a lot. Then again, I'm sure if you have 500 or 1000 workstations you can work a better deal with them.

Isn't this how free software is supposed to work?

They are selling a support service. You can either get the updates yourself and apply them to your systems, or use the easy push method from Red Hat Network.

What's the problem? They have to make money somehow, and supposedly support is the way it should be done with open source. Support them.

Huh?

Oh no... someone said Money in the same paragraph as Linux, someone better prepare for the onslaught of free software fanatics from Slashdot...

...who are also going to try and mod this down.

Yikes, wake up guy. Free Software is about Freedom, not money. Lots of "Free Software fanatics" posted before you did, and we're saying that this was exactly the sort of thing Redhat is supposed to do to make money and keep working.

How well it will work remains to be seen, but I wish em the best.

Cmdr Taco is trolling again... *yawn*

Taco:

I want RH to make a buck too, but this seems like a pretty crappy way to do it.

Just why is this a crappy way to do it, Taco? Huh? What the hell is wrong with selling optional services to support the company? What better ideas do you have for a business model?

With Editors like this who needs trolls?

"That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."

Re:But this is what was touted all along...

Exactly right. Unfortunately, from what I read, a lot of people only pay lip service to the different OSS philosophies and the ideal "business models" suggested or tried by the linux world...underneath all they care about is getting everything for free. It IS sad, especially (it has been said before in this discussion) when you can just download and apply the updates yourself at no cost still.

$9.95 to spend

The choice is difficult: beer, update redhat, beer, update redhat, beer, mmm... Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!

--

Exactly how then?

Since the poster doesn't like the charge for update agent, what other ways would he/she have them make money? Look, the redhat update agent is the very definition of "Value Added Service" and it seems very reasonable to charge for it. They noted in the post that the old way of getting the files and applying updates still works just fine. Why not charge a (in my mind) paltry 10 bucks to make it easier? Look, not everyone has their linux server hacked together from 486 parts and hooked to a cable service. Some folks are trying to push it into the enterprise and services like this are great for that.

Not the "M" word!

Oh no... someone said Money in the same paragraph as Linux, someone better prepare for the onslaught of free software fanatics from Slashdot...


...who are also going to try and mod this down.

But this is what was touted all along...

For nearly two years major linux firms said they would one day charge for services related to their software, and for nearly as long /. users have been touting this as a viable business model. Now that it is implementation time, all of a sudden the cost of one movie ticket and a soda is too much to pay to a company that lets you download their principal product for free.

Re:Red Hat Network was never going to be free....

"maybe we should make some money"
They are a For Profit business are they not. Furthermore, this isn't anything new, it's called Value Add and it was always their intention to make more money on services than on product. In fact, that's the whole point of the Open Source _business_ model.
p.s. Don't expect Eazel's or even Ximian's services to be completely free for long either. Mostly because all three companies stated early on in their founding that this was _exactly_ how they planned on making money. When they take away your source and dominate the computer industry with an iron fist, then you can say they're becoming MS. Until then, chill out and realize that if they don't make money and go out of business a lot of damn good programmers who work on Linux full-time will be out of work.

Re:More than just US$9.95

"Nix gurus" don't necessarily have time to check for, download, and install every single RPM.

What kind of a Unix guru doesn't script this process? It's really just a matter of grabbing any updates in Redhat's 'updates/(versionnumber)/(arch)' and 'updates/(versionnumber)/noarch' directories and then applying an 'rpm -F (downloaded rpms)'. Not necessarily doable by the stereotypical RedHat user, but certainly not a problem for a Unix guru.

I've even got my own ugly, ugly, homebrew, hacked-up solution that, while not 100% automated, lets me do an update (for my desktop machine and all 3 servers) in the background with only ~30 seconds of manual intervention. Automating the last little bit wouldn't be too much harder.

The fact that RedHat's charging money for such a service amazes me. I understand that they provide value, I understand that it costs them money to provide this value, and I wish them the best of luck at making a buck, but it seems that their business model in this case can be devasted by someone willing to do a bit of scripting. Even Kirk Bauer's autorpm [kaybee.org] provides a free alternative (that has existed since before RedHat's update agent.

There're two things that I can think of that make RedHat's business model potentially viable:

• Lack of information - John Q. User will probably go with the quick-and-easy update process that's readily visible after installing RedHat.
• Priority updates - RedHat could hypothetically decide to offer updates via the update agent service before they're available via FTP. Depending on how this gets done, it could be delibrate (such as it appearing on the update agent a week before FTP) or just an artifact of bandwidth and priority (it may appear on the FTP site as soon as the update agent starts pushing, but connection limits and mirroring delays may mean it's not readily available until a day or two later).

Exactly... service charge

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. It's not like they're still not providing the source code, and the ability to modify it... they are also not preventing you in anyway from distributing it. They're charging for the acti of downloading a distribution they've put together. Notice too, that unlike a certain OTHER company, they actually have competitors for what is generally the same product. Now, I like free things, and I am a RH user, but it's not like you can expect RH to survive on charity. Notice, that this is completely within the spirit of opensource software. Charging for a service.

/. is a great site, and open source is wonderful, but sometimes the opensource community can be a bit whiney.... esp when no crime has been committed.

On the other hand, I do hope RH understands when I start using another distribution. :-p

This is how open source is supposed to make money!

But aren't this kind of extra-value services (packaging, customization, documentation, etc.) just how free software / open source is supposed to make money. Even if you ask RMS [gnu.org].

*gasp*

you mean, after spending thousands and thousands of dollars for developing updates..they're going to charge?? How dare they follow economic reality!