[TriLUG] Red Hat's new errata support policy of "consumer" OSes

Tom 'spot' Callaway tcallawa at redhat.com
Tue Jan 28 16:01:55 EST 2003


On Tue, 2003-01-28 at 15:33, Chris Hedemark wrote:
> On Tuesday, January 28, 2003, at 01:22 PM, Mike Broome wrote:
> 
> > Here's an interesting article from The Register with commentary on Red
> > Hat's new position of supporting "consumer" OS releases for only 12
> > months.
> 
> Without going into detail, it has definitely gotten my attention (RH 
> enterprise entitlement customer).  I definitely plan on bringing it up 
> with my account manager.
> 
> I'm personally not happy with the idea that we're forced into using 
> RHAS if we don't want to have to do a major upgrade every year.  If I'm 
> reading this policy correctly, it would preclude me from deploying Red 
> Hat on desktops due to the rapid life cycle of their consumer releases 
> (and I'm not going to pay the $$$ for RHAS on the desktop).

Without going into a lot of details, I'll say this: Don't overreact on
this one. I know what Red Hat's road map is for the next year, and it
doesn't involve forcing anyone to run Advanced Server on the desktop.

Red Hat is introducing an Enterprise product line, of which Advanced
Server is the premier member of. There will be an Advanced Workstation
offering, in addition to another offering that I simply cannot discuss.

There will be cost efficient options for supported and maintained
enterprise products for long term deployments of servers and
workstations. It just won't be off the base distribution.

> No, I don't expect RH to support their products forever, but for 
> enterprise entitlement customers a few years wouldn't hurt.

Key difference: Enterprise.

Red Hat Linux is not for enterprise customers anymore. Our Red Hat
Enterprise Linux line is what enterprise customers should be using.

For home or hacker use, the Red Hat Linux product line is your choice.

I'm sorry I can't be more specific on this, but all I can say is that
its not the end of the world, far from it.

Chris (and anyone seriously concerned about enterprise deployments),
please give Red Hat a call. Let me get you under NDA, and explain the
roadmap to you. I think it will ease your major concerns.

~spot 
---
Tom "spot" Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat*com> (SAIR LCA, RHCE)
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Red Hat Sales Engineer :: http://www.redhat.com
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The words and opinions reflected in this message do not necessarily
reflect those of my employer, Red Hat, or my project, Aurora 
SPARC Linux and belong solely to me.

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