Re: Enterprise/Consumer support debate

On 2003-03-27 at 12:01:45-0500 Gerald Henriksen <[email protected]> wrote:

> No one is saying it should be free, but rather that all of a sudden
> Red Hat has abandoned all those customers who needed an affordable
> alternative and for whom the level of service offered by the
> Enterprise line is overkill, and as such cannot justify the price
> jumps.

No, they haven't.  The Consumer line is free (free as in freedom,
*and* free as in beer).  If you can't afford the Enterprise line, then
there's nothing to stop you from running the Consumer line on your
servers.

> The fact that the "consumer" line will likely be having significant
> changes each month means no individual release will have the
> opportunity to reach a big enough installed base.

I don't recall Red Hat stating that they would be making drastic
updates to the Consumer releases each month.  They've stated that new
technology will probably arrive in the Consumer line a little more
quickly than in the past, which is a change I welcome.

> What we want is support for at least a 2 year period without having
> to pay for the additional baggage that the Enterprise line brings
> with it.

If you want to support release [x] of the Consumer line for an
additional 12 months after Red Hat drops support, then do it yourself.
It's not hard:

    1.  Subscribe to Bugtraq.

    2.  When a security advisory is released for an application, check
        to see if that application is in the Consumer release you're
        supporting, and if so, whether or not it's vulnerable.

    3.  If the application is vulnerable, grab the SRPM for it, apply
        the patch (backporting if necessary), and rebuild.  You've
        just created an errata update.

    4.  Apply your new errata update RPM on all of your affected
        systems.

This is the beauty of the GPL: because you have the source, you can
support yourself.  You don't have to pay Red Hat anything.



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