Willing to pay for useful services, can't find them

Tom Diehl wrote:
> There are a bunch of people doing this for free. 
> Look here:
> http://www.caosity.org/ and here http://www.beau.org/~jmorris/linux/whitebox/
> 
> There is also a mailing list here: [email protected]
> 
> In addition people like Owl River do it for a fee.

WBEL looks interesting.  You are doing a great service by letting us 
know about any other companies/organizations that are providing the 
services RedHat no longer chooses to provide.  Please don't stop.

I'd like to voice my own position once again:  I am not among those who 
Linux users who feel charging for services is morally wrong under any 
circumstances.  I was very happy to see the academic pricing; if I could 
continue to get patch support for my existing RedHat 7.1, 8, and 9 Linux 
versions, I'd gladly hand over my cash.  I'd even smile.

My gripe with RedHat is that they partnered with Dell to make 
preinstalled Linux available to customers purchasing PCs.  Dell put 
RedHat 8 on the PC I ordered in late May 2003.  They put RedHat 9 on a 
PC another lab ordered a few months later.  Little did I know I'd have 
to reinstall the OS less than a year later, if I want to keep my system 
free of security vulnerabilities.

At least the Dell site now offers the Enterprise version, but it's not 
even the default option.  This is Dell's problem, but it's also 
RedHat's; I expect RedHat to be a responsible partner.

I knew I was looking at having to upgrade my RedHat 7.1 system sometime 
in the near future.  I bought that system in late 2001.  But RedHat 
should not discontinue patch support in April 2004 for OS versions it 
partnered with Dell to provide this year.  Real companies don't do that.

Thanks for listening.