Re: Product cycles too short for small businesses (esp. Red Hat)

On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 02:44:04PM -0400, Jay Smith wrote:
> David,
> 
> Thanks for your thoughts on this.  What my SMALL company would need is the 
> Enterprise Server Standard Edition at $799, plus whatever the annual 
> ongoing fee would be.

Do you really need a FULL YEAR of phone support? Or is 90 days enough?  If 90 days is enough (and you can survive with download only) then we've got you down to Enterprise Server Basic Edition for $349/yr.

> Sure, $799 is less than the daily lunch cost in the corporate dining room 
> for some companies, but at my small company, $799 is real money.

FYI $799 is real money for all companies.  Well maybe not to dotcom companies but most of them aren't around anymore.

> No, I am *not* asking for *free* updates forever.  What I am asking for is 
> assured availability of updates and security fixes for more than 12-18 
> months.

> When RH comes out with a new version that I install, we go ahead and buy 
> the  "box"; I don't try to download it for free.  We DO pay the annual fee 
> for up2date (which only works some of the time for us).  We are willing to 
> pay.

Willing to pay but only as little as possible right?  Very generous of you to pay for one box set and then expect support for all your servers and workstations. 

> David, the point is that this *is* an annoyance -- that is what this list 
> is about -- and that the annoyance is that the linux "packagers" are 
> forgetting about, misunderstanding, or ignoring the economic limitations 
> of the smaller business customers.

Jay, this is an annoyance for you because you choose not to educate yourself into Redhats several levels of support/cost and because you thought the "free ride" of the early years would continue forever.  

This is an annoyance for me because I have to listen to people like you complain about something that isn't a problem.

> Also, the short product cycle without security updates after a short 
> amount of time will create ongoing security problems for the whole 
> industry. Anybody who can't afford to buy the more costly products or who 
> can't afford the (large amount of) time required to constantly install new 
> versions of the free products will be without security fixes after a 
> couple of years.  Those machines will then become targets for attacks that 
> could (like Windows machines) turn them into zombies that will be use for 
> DoS attacks on the 'net.

So because some people are lazy and/or stupid, Redhat should foot the bill providing a service to them for FREE for EVER?

If you want free updates forever then run a distro that provides for that (example: Debian). 

Dave V.

-- 
David E Vehrs, System Engineer          Aspen Systems
[email protected]                       3900 Youngfield Street
Tel: +01 303 431 4606                   Wheat Ridge CO 80033, USA
Fax: +01 303 431 7196                   http://www.aspsys.com