OT: I don't get this - Red Hat

[Aaron Grewell]

- Severen as a "community project" could very well devolve into being
> little better than the other dozens (nay, hundreds) of half-baked 
> homegrown distros. Of interest only to the hobbyists.

Quite true, but it's not intended for anyone else so that's OK.

> - They are leaving a portion of the market unsatisfied. There simply 
> won't be a Red Hat offering (stable but with a good quantity of 
> reasonably modern packages) that can be purchased at, say, the price 
> point of a copy of WindowsXP Pro (aka $150) with good (printed) 
> documentation, timely security updates, and support available. There 
> will be the free hobbyist version or the unaffordable enterprise 
> version. But nothing in-between.

Actually, it's listed at $180 for the base version, and if you count the 
included office suite ($250+ from MS) it's a deal and a half.  Box, 
manual and support are an extra $120, though.  See:
http://www.redhat.com/software/rhel/ws/

> - And exiting the retail market can only cause the kind of loss of 
> mindshare / visibility that has yet to bring good fortune to anyone who 
> has tried it.

Buying retail is rare enough that I don't think it'll hurt them. 
Besides, the WS version may actually be carried if it gains currency in 
the market.  Just not right away.

> Hopefully I'll be proven embarrassingly wrong on all of this.

I hope so too. ;)

I think it's more likely that this will cannibalize their server sales 
in the SMB and Educational markets where money is at a premium.  Larger 
companies will just buy AS or ES depending on hardware, but those who 
can't afford it will buy WS (and likely only one copy of that) and use 
the SRPMS from the ES version (freely available for d/l from RH) to 
graft the additional technology on.  This will give them the advantage 
of support from 3rd-party vendors without all the cost.  I wonder how 
the company will address this issue, or if they will at all.