On Tue, 2003-09-30 at 18:11, Chuck Wolber wrote: > > > I dont expect that this will be any different for any of the Linux > > > companies and volunteer orgs (Debian) in the coming years. Everytime > > > there is a new Debian, the security volunteers say they will only > > > maintain the old release for 6 months and there is great wailing and > > > nashing of teeth about how shitty Debian is. > > > > The difference of course is, Debian offers a stable release life of over > > 2 years prior. That is hardly as aggravating as making a major migration > > potentially twice a year. I think you will find very few orgs willing to > > deploy Fedora under those conditions, and even fewer able to justify > > paying for RHEL being that it is quite expensive compared to other > > options. > > That's our point. When you deploy on hundreds of servers, like many of the > consortium members do, there's no chance in heck that we're going to pay a > minimum of $179 (on up to $2500 IIRC) *PER* server. I'd much prefer to > pool resources and distribute the cost. Well if you need no support from RH .... -> Buy as many licenses as you feel you can, you can even use these on your priority production machines for the support aspect -> Download the SRPMS[1] -> Use an installed system to build the SRPMS into a distro, since they are GPLed.[2] -> Deploy the GPL version to your other systems, "branding" it a "Common Operating Environment" There is a project already underway on making a system to build an installable release from the SRPMS. To me, this is the best of both worlds for those unable/unwilling to negotiate w/RH over unit pricing. You can spend what you feel you should, pay for some support, and have the rest of your systems supported by you, yet running a longer term install. Another alternative is to not upgrade each and avery time Fedora Core is released. Especially if binary compat. is/is not broken in *every* release. Cheers, Bill [1] Funny (in a good way) thing, RH goes *beyond* the GPL requirements by making these available. Outside of stripping those, there is no getting around needing to pay a license fee for those bits. [2] I am assuming that like AS2.x WS/ES contain licensed third party binaries -- Bill Anderson RHCE #807302597505773 bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
