OT: I feel vindicated ...

[Collins Richey]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 10:20:07 -0700, Andrew Mathews
<andrew_mathews at linux-works.org> wrote:
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> Net Llama! wrote:
> | On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Collins Richey wrote:
> |
> |>On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 08:27:58 -0600, Michael Hipp <Michael at hipp.com> wrote:
> |>
> |>>Red Hat now admits it was a mistake:
> |>>
> |>>http://osdir.com/Article4265.phtml
> |>>
> |>
> |>Yeah, we're all vindicated. I posted the full text of RedHats mea
> |>culpa in a thread a couple of days ago.
> |>
> |>http://news.com.com/Red+Hat+Fedora+will+engage+customers/2100-7344_3-5582945.html
> |
> |
> | I know i'm the resident RH whore and all, but i just don't see what the
> | big deal is here.  I think RH is just using this as an excuse for the fact
> | that they've got some real competition for the first time.  Fedora is an
> | excellent distro that meets all of my needs.
> |
> 
> It's another one of those "Why would I even *consider* running distro X
> when distro y does blah blah blah". I don't feel there's any vindication
> to be done. I have over 100 servers running both Redhat and Fedora, and
> have cut our maintenance costs on supporting AIX on RS/6000's by nearly
> $500,000 a year. I really don't care what someone's favorite flavor is,
> and I don't recall asking for anybody's blessing on my choices. The only
> people who it really matters to are the ones needing an excuse for their
> pulpit pounding, "I told you so" behavior. Remember, most all of us were
> Caldera "whores" before this list, so I'm a little leery of anyone who's
> calling my kettle black.
> 

My, aren't we a little tetchy now! You're right, no one asked, and no
one answered. It matters little what kind of ho one is. The topic of
this thread was the RedHat History, IMO approximately the following:

1. RH made available and maintained a free distribution for years in
addition to its for-hire servers
2. RH dumped this distro with no advance warning and turned a deaf ear
to complaints
3. RH made available an "even higher-priced spread" for customers with big bucks
4. RH established Fedora as a testbed for its high-priced spread with
no guaranteed reliability for those with few bucks
5. Lots of folks considered themselves "screwed over" and departed
noisily for greener and/or freer pastures
6. With 100% hindsight, RH realized that pissing off your customer
base (even the free riders) is not a good idea (TM). Mea culpas and
more attention paid to Fedora to follow.
7. Other folks (the RH ho's) were not concerned by any of this tempest
in a teapot

II'm in the middle, as usual. Although I'm certainly a Gentoo ho, I'm
giving FC3 a workout now, and there is much to like, most especially
the fact that RH is now promissing to pay more careful attention to
FCn and, perhaps, to make more packages available, which has always
been my principle gripe with RH desktop systems.

Enjoy,

-- 
 Collins