[lug] Fedora

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Wed, 2003-09-24 at 12:52, Joseph McDonald wrote:
> So going forward only RHEL is suitable for production systems? You can't 
> expect to run RHL in production unless you pay (a bunch) for a license? I 
> think you can kiss RHL's dominant position goodbye. 

Depends on what your service needs are...

> Let's say I want to
> roll out a RHL webserver farm. 

Many Webserver farms probably don't require the tools the Enterprise
edition will provide - things like Apache and MySQL can be had for free
and managed by the local admins if they have that required background. 
In these cases Fedora will probably suffice.  Alternatively, Fedora
won't offer managed or automated security upgrades, so if you're farm is
large you might consider RHEL instead just to make such management more,
well, manageable.

> Does Redhat expect me to pay around a grand
> for a license, then a monthly fee to subscribe to their errata/rhn service?

Probably.  But if you can manage your systems on your own, there is no
need to.  It sounds as though Red Hat is interested in those companies
who need the managed care of an open source platform.  If you don't need
that managed care, then you have the option of Fedora.  While the
licensing amount for RHEL is high for an individual or even small (<10
man) shop, its not that big a deal for larger companies.

Keep in mind that Fedora offers an entry point for small businesses to
offer the same kind of operation as RHEL but to smaller clients and at
lower costs.  Its just a matter of being clever enough to find a way to
offer the managed services.  KRUD is an example of this option
currently.

> There's sure to be a stigma associated with running a testing branch in
> production. 

Possibly.  If there is, there is always RHEL and KRUD.

-- 
Michael J. Hammel                               The Graphics Muse 
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org                      http://www.graphics-muse.com
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