[lug] Fedora *MEETS* KRUD comments wanted

[Kirk Rafferty]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2003 at 03:03:46PM -0600, 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 
> -- even though they never really owed it to me in the first place.  I 
> can't blame them, but I also can't trust them anymore.  They're no 
> longer a "helpful partner", they're someone who just caused a very 
> difficult decision about what to run in the future and demanded a big 
> check to not have to make that decision.

Your opinion is your own, of course, but is this really a trust issue?
Red Hat didn't lie and say they were providing one thing, but really gave
you another.  They just changed business models.  They weren't making money
off the old model, so they needed to change.  This isn't a betrayal, it's
a change to keep the company viable.

Really, if anyone is to "blame" for this, I think it's the people and
companies that didn't financially support Red Hat by buying their product.
I can understand hobbyists or students not paying for it, but there are
plenty of companies out there that could have sprung for the $60/year for
RHN.  The average IT salary pays somewhere around $60k/year, and yet we
can't seem to be bothered to spend a couple of those dollars on a boxed
set.  If you expect any distro to survive, it cannot be free as in beer.

I don't mean this unkindly, but you said that Red Hat are "no longer a
helpful partner."  But you also admit that you are not a paying customer.
You should consider that Red Hat could say that you were never a helpful
partner for them.

>  The "rules" changed without warning.

The rules certainly changed, but not without warning.  Red Hat have given
months of notice that this was going to happen.  They've also stuck to
their end-of-life commitments for current versions.  RH9 will be supported
until, I believe, April 2004.

> Kinda like Verisign's DNS wildcard records for .com and .net this week...

Verisign nakedly grabbed power, and abused their stewardship of the root
servers for ill-gained profit.  Red Hat changed their business model.  I
really don't think you can make this connection with any level of
intellectual honesty.

Best regards,
Kirk