Gee, Brian. It seems like Red Hat created their own mess here. Even if it
is a "non-mess".
I'd say RH needs to greatly simplify the story and make it a no-brainer to
know which version of FC matches a version of RHE. Otherwise, I suspect
everyone will stay a bit confused.
Look at all the typing you've had to do on this subject.
BTW, good to have you back...
Ken Elliott
=====================
-----Original Message-----
From: slug@nks.net [mailto:slug@nks.net] On Behalf Of Bryan J. Smith
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 9:27 PM
To: slug@nks.net
Subject: [SLUG] Re: Moving from Red Hat
Various people wrote:
> 1. I like X ...
> 2. blah ... Fedora ... blah
Personal preference is always a matter of choice. I never discredit the
choice of others, as it is personal preference. I support a lot of
distributions, especially Debian-based distributions like Xandros as well as
Debian itself, and SuSE is making more commercial in-roads thanx to Novell.
This is all fine, as people often argue that "choice is good." But why does
one need to continually expense Red Hat?
Because the one thing I have continually butt my head up against is people
stating things about Red Hat Linux and, now, Fedora Core that are simply
_not_true_, or full of _incorrect_assumptions_. This is not "choice," it is
"versus." In other words, it is "marketing" and "unintentional FUD." And
when this is portrayed in the IT media, I just have to wonder how much of a
disservice we, the Linux community, are doing to ourselves?
I don't know how many times I've seen myself get "reamed by the majority" on
a list as a "Red Hat apologist" only to have someone mention off-list that
they work for a major integrator and that I'm 100% correct. This has also
led to some excellent opportunities for myself, even if only short-lived
work. Some people call me a jerk, and while I don't deny that I am
sometimes abbrassive in some of my responses, they should take note that I
don't "bash" distros or feel the need to make an argument "versus" just to
merely profess my preference. In fact, I consider the whole "versus"
comments to be the main problem of the commercial software world. Let's
reduce it to technologies, not brand names and products. E.g., a "ports"
distro versus a "packages" distro, not Gentoo v. Red Hat, or FreeBSD v.
Linux in general -- because there is _major_overlap_ that assumptions don't
show (and are, therefore, incorrect).
Red Hat "assumptions" start as far back as Red Hat Linux 5.0 and the GLibC 2
change, which was a _major_ necessity. They happened again with Red Hat
Linux 7 and GCC 2.96/3 adoption forcing strict ANSI C++ compliance that
broke compatibility with GCC 2.8/2.91.66 (the latter aka EGCS 1.1.2). The
backport of NPTL to 2.4 gave yet more avenues for people to complain, yet
NPTL was being forced in 2.6.** But many don't recognize that with Red
Hat's "plunge" into GLibC2, GCC3 and NPTL -- they forced developers to
support inevitable changes that were going to happen in the near future.
Red Hat is just the messenger with these ".0" revision changes for "early
adopters," but is rarely thanked as such (even when they _do_ maintain older
versions _specifically_ so people don't have to convert for years -- far
longer than most other distros I might add).
[ **NOTE: I document most of these "ABI Compability" reasons here:
http://www.vaporwarelabs.com/files/temp/RH-Distribution-FAQ-3.html#ss3.3
]
They continued through endless comments on the Red Hat(R) v. Fedora(TM)
trademark details only made matters worse to this day. Red Hat(R) tried to
use the "Official" prefix and that didn't work. And then it came ot a head
in 2002-2003, largely because Red Hat(R) had serious issues with the USPTO
thanx to Sun and other vendors who claimed "Red Hat(R)" was public domain."
Why? Sun and countless others didn't license but left all the Red Hat(R)
trademarks intact in their distributions, resulting in the disputes. But at
the same time, even when Red Hat explicitly stated companies like
Cheapbytes.COM could still call their CD's Red
Hat(R) Linux, the demonizations still wouldn't end.
The only thing Red Hat is guilty of is assuming people wouldn't abuse their
trademark in a 100% redistributable version. They were wrong.
But while people now demonizing Red Hat for this, they don't bother to
notice that no other, major commercial distributor allows unlicensed use of
their trademark either in off-shoots. You don't see Sun sporting a SuSE
trademark on their Java Desktop, and even then Sun had to license the rights
to it anyway (unlike when they used Red Hat(R) Linux prior).
As Red Hat constantly tries to state all over their Fedora site, "it's a
return to Red Hat's roots" -- i.e., here's a trademark and distribution
system that offers everything we always did with Red Hat Linux.
Michael Tiemann can say one thing in an interview and the IT media will
report another. Red Hat released a flavor of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
called "WS" and then even sold a shrink wrapped version explicitly called
"Red Hat Professional Workstation" and the media still said they were only
selling server software. So probably the biggest and direct example of Red
Hat trying to convey one more time "Hey! We still offer a desktop
solution!" was in the _intentional_mislabeling_ of 10 and 50-license packs
of RHEL WS as "Red Hat Desktop." And yet the IT media still say Red Hat has
exited the desktop.
Now people ask me to point to Red Hat's site to "prove" my statements are
"true." They use IT media articles to prove theirs are "true." The IT
media has been predicting Red Hat would "close up" their Linux for a longest
time and it hasn't happened. In fact, when Sistina decided to "close up"
their LVM and GFS technologies, Red Hat bought them out, and re-released
them GPL. And before that, when Mission Critical Linux started to "close
up" various NFS fail-over technologies, Red Hat bought them out. And going
even before that, when Cygnus considered "closing up" various GPL offerings,
Red Hat decided to finally buy them out too (although it was for other
reasons too, Red Hat had been considering it for a long time). When has the
media _ever_ shown these moves in a positive light to Red Hat?
No, it was in fact the opposite. Many people predicted that Cygnus
developers would leave en-masse as Red Hat would turn their stuff from GPL
into proprietary. Didn't happen (actually, the opposite happened, Red Hat
tried to get into the embedded market with too much GPL focus).
In fact, to this day, most commercial companies love Red Hat for their
GPL-focus and community efforts, but think they take it too far from a
commercial support standpoint. Probably the biggest coup to date is Red
Hat's buying out the Netscape Directory Server from AOL for $20M, which will
go GPL no later than April 30, 2005. Netscape Directory Server is at the
foundation of Sun One's directory implementation, and I'm sure Red Hat's
move to GPL it for _all_ to use is a final statement that "hey, OpenLDAP
ain't getting there." We all continue to benefit from the proper usage of
Red Hat's IPO capital to ensure the best software stays GPL or becomes GPL.
Which brings me to my final point. The Red Hat Fedora page has changed and
the "About" and "Objectives" pages now match _everything_ that was Red
Hat(R) Linux before. But people can't put it together. So, the top
5 things you _won't_ here Red Hat representatives say ... for obvious
reasons of marketing ...
5. We use the exact same release model for Fedora(TM) Core as Red
Hat(R) Linux prior, but we changed the terms 1 for 1 to something else.
In fact, most of our developers still call it "Rawhide" when they know they
are contractually obligated to call it "Development" now. In fact, we
merely made previously non-public resources, like the Red Hat(R) Linux
lists, now renamed Fedora lists, open to the public for subscription by
anyone.
4. We provide the systems, network infrastructure and personnel for the
entire, official Fedora project, and even if this currently being moved to
Duke University under an independent Steering Committee, this will not
change. It is also the #1 legal reason why we have strict "free software"
guidelines in Fedora, because it's a liability issue for us, a US-based
corporation, regardless. The Red Hat(R) Linux development model was always
open, and now we have formalized the method this is done with the Fedora(TM)
Core "Steering Committee."
3. Every single package in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, _every_ single
package, has a _direct_ Fedora version, right down to the package name and
number. Packages that are marked "EL" typically just have unsupported
locales removed**. The "EL" kernel may have some hardware additions under
NDA, but builds perfectly on Fedora**. As a result, with exception of the
kernel, you can create a 100% exact instance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
with Fedora Core, by maintaining the exact package versions.
[**NOTE: You can find these references in various mailing list archives at
Red Hat. They go into detail on how most "EL" packages differ.
Otherwise, the packages of Fedora Core and RHEL are the _exact_ same. ]
2. Following onto #3, this is why we release Fedora(TM), under new
trademark guidelines. Now anyone can take our best stuff, and build their
own distro -- right down to _exact_ Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages. This
is also why the "White Box" and other "rebuilds" of RHEL from source are
self-defeating. Because they have to now remove the trademarks in the
packages, whereas they are a non-issue with Fedora(TM). That's the whole
reason for it! RHEL exists for a reason, which brings us to #1 ...
1. SuSE was first with the Enterprise Linux idea, and our customers told us
Red Hat Linux 6.2"E" was the wrong strategy. Do you really think we are
going to admit this? Heck, it's right in SuSE's marketing literature! They
were first, okay, we admit, our own clients liked it better! So we had to
change. After 2 years, we finally evolved Red
Hat(R) Linux into Fedora(TM) Core, to address this new, split strategy.
Regarding #2, I have now been at 2 _major_ Fortune 100 companies over the
past year. They are doing _exactly_ this, maintaining an internal Fedora
repository that matches their RHEL deployments, as well as planning for
future RHEL releases (e.g., Fedora Core 2 before RHEL 4 came out). Why? To
tweak support for Oracle and other software on potential "updates" to RHEL
before they are released.
-- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org -------------------------------------------------------------------- Subtotal Cost of Ownership (SCO) for Windows being less than Linux Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) assumes experts for the former, costly retraining for the latter, omitted "software assurance" costs in compatible desktop OS/apps for the former, no free/legacy reuse for latter, and no basic security, patch or downtime comparison at all.----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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