On Thu, 2004-03-18 at 10:58, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:
> The single biggest reason why I use Red Hat Linux, RHEL, and Fedora is that
> I trusted RH to provide me with timely and well-built packages such that I
> would never have to rebuild vanilla code again. I now trust RH to spend the
> time, money, and effort in creating a community-based system to make sure
> the same happens for Fedora.
>
You are part of that community. If you do not have time to put into the
efforts of the community, then I would highly suggest you pay RedHat for
one of their commercial licenses where you do get fast security updates.
No more free lunch people. Either help out in the community effort, or help out with your money. Really it's not difficult to understand the economics of this one.
Quit bitching at me. Firstly, I was not the one complaining. Secondly:
* I have and will continue to pay Red Hat money even when I don't have to, just to help out. I bought a few boxed sets of every major release 6 through 9.
* About 2,000 unique visitors are hitting my website every month (about 9,500 total so far) for Linux documentation, mostly specific to Red Hat Linux and derivative OS's like Aurora Linux and Fedora Core, which took me dozens if not hundreds of hours to write (never mind learning how to write a damn website using PHP)
* I hosted a Red Hat mirror for about three years (spending probably $18,000 total out of my own pocket for bandwidth) and IIRC burned over 500 sets of CD's (at no cost) for people who couldn't download due to lack of bandwidth or high cost of Internet connectivity
* I'm actively running and helping to test Aurora Linux, which is essentially Red Hat Linux (soon-to-be Fedora Core) for the Sun SPARC architecture. In the last 90 days, I've spent at least $300 on hardware I don't need in order to have something which I can reinstall on a weekly basis and so attempt to make a minor contribution
* I contribute and help with the Linux Documentation Project when I can, and I've been on these lists (probably helping and answering more than asking) for at least the last seven or eight years (which includes about 300-400 messages a day, every day, for the entirety of that time)
* And I have a day job and a family, neither of which is even vaguely Linux-related
I hope you're putting in *at least* as much time, money, and effort as I am. Otherwise, get the hell off your high horse.
So read the entire thread properly, and go harass someone else. My comment was that I find the "you can only trust config/make/makeinstall" comment asinine. In the modern world, you specialize. Some do one thing, some do another. If everyone truly had to tarball and configure all their code, that would be the most inefficient, ineffective, user-hostile OS on the planet. Hence, my approval and trust of Red Hat's efforts and the Fedora Community's efforts to develop, test, and QA a package and my refusal to get all my stuff from tarballs and spend weeks compiling everything under the sun... if I had to do all that, then even Windows would be cheaper and easier!
Clearer now?
-- Rodolfo J. Paiz rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.simpaticus.com
