[lug] Fedora *MEETS* KRUD comments wanted

[Hugh Brown]

On Fri, 2003-09-26 at 16:16, Ed Hill wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-09-26 at 15:25, Nate Duehr wrote:
> > Michael J. Hammel wrote:
> > 
> > > On Thu, 2003-09-25 at 16:03, Nate Duehr wrote:
> > > 
> > >>I do not trust RedHat anymore.  They have the appearance of no longer 
> > >>having my best interests at heart, as a non-paying user of their system 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > My guess is that, as a non-paying user, they weren't really worried
> > > about your trust.  In fact, they probably had no idea you existed unless
> > > you somehow registered as a non-paying user.  They aren't running for
> > > congress.  They're running a business.  And doing a much better job for
> > > paying consumers than MS has.  Had you paid for the service, you might
> > > have stronger arguments here.
> > 
> > I guess I wasn't clear enough -- the "as a non-paying user of their 
> > system" was meant to say something along the lines of:
> 
> 
> [*SNIP* : Long but well-reasoned discussion trimmed...]
> 
> 
> Hi Nate,
> 
> OK, theres still one area where I think a lot of people are perhaps
> (severely?) overestimating the cost of RHEL when used for multiple
> machines.
> 
> Whats to stop you from buying a small number of copies of RHEL (WS, ES,
> or AS) and a small number of RHN subscriptions and then using your own
> INTERNAL (to your company) mechanisms to distribute the updates to
> multiple internal machines?
> 
> Remember, Red Hat is very careful to include only Open Source packages
> in their distributions so I don't see where you'd be violating any
> copyright laws.  So far as I can tell, theres nothing illegal about this
> sort of (again, strictly internal) distribution of Open Sourced and/or
> Free software.  Its not the software (per se) that Red Hat is selling. 
> Its primarily the support and service.
> 
> Using such a strategy, a company or individual can keep many machines
> updated from a relatively small number of "standard" configurations that
> are automatically cloned or otherwise copied.  And lets face it, theres
> nothing new about this strategy.  So the trade-off becomes: your time
> and effort to setup an update service versus a per-machine subscription
> where Red Hat conveniently does it for you.  If your time is worth much
> less than the extra RHN subscriptions, then go for it.  If your time is
> valuable, then perhaps the RHN subscriptions are a bargain?
> 
> Ed


We have gotten a number of boxen from Penguin Computing and I talked to
my sales rep there.  He said when they sell a cluster, they have to pay
for a license for every box with a RHEL install.

My trouble with the whole affair is that I don't have access to updates
anymore without paying a significant sum.  My current set up is to
mirror the updates tree off one of the redhat mirrors.  I then apply
updates as needed to the machines I have.  As far as I can tell, I'd
have to pay $300/box if I went with the workstation version.  We're a
small business with about 70 workstations and servers.  $21000 is 15
more workstations (or more).  I wouldn't mind paying for access to some
security updates, but the per box restriction is a bit much esp. when I
provide all the support myself.  Right now, I am considering moving the
company to SuSE or Debian.  Access to the updates for $500/yr would be
something I could see defending to management.  $21K initial outlay,
plus recurring costs is too rich for my blood.

Just my opinions.

Hugh