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Re: [PLUG] FW: Red Hat Linux end-of-life update and transition planning
On Tuesday, November 4, 2003, at 10:16 AM, Art Clemons wrote:
Personally, I've started using Gentoo, so I guess I'm ok at home.
At work, well that was as different story. Until I saw this:
http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/11/pr03069.html
Since we're a novell shop, it kind of works out for us.
Don't be too sure, Novell has a long history of buying things and
letting them wither away if its practices don't just outright kill it
off. Think of the history of WordPerfect and Novell before you expect
Suse to be around for the long term.
We may actually be reaching the end of packaged distributions of Linux
products, unless we all start paying more for said distributions.
I've never been a RedHat fan, but its changes are a good indication
that not enough money is being made selling to individuals, who also
don't buy support. Suse being sold is another indication that things
don't always work out.
This is all also a direct reaction to the SCO "suit." SCO's goal is to
put the "cheap" development of software into the dustbin of history.
By eliminating "free" versions of Linux ... i.e. cheap packaged
products masquerading as proprietary versions with full support ... SCO
resurrects the huge margins associated with support contracts. They
eliminate the idea that Linux is "Enterprise Ready" -- that you can bet
your company on something like "free Linux." Only "proprietary Linux"
versions (aka Enterprise Linux) will be available, for which
substantially higher prices will have to be paid, rendering Linux less
and less "interesting" as an alternative to Microsoft. That this
completely destroys the market is of no concern, it is a very typically
short-sighted "grab-market-share-at-any-cost" tactic, which, sadly,
usually works.
Greed is a very nasty motivator -- it normally leads to the results
attributed to the old Communist Joke -- Peasant: "Commissar, my
neighbor has a goat, and I have none." Commissar: "What would you have
me do?" Peasant: "Kill my neighbor's goat."
. . .
I have also heard Suits laughingly describe how Linux and Free Software
(aka Open Source) are the real reason for the lack of Programming jobs
in the US ... not their being shipped to India! One recent comment went
-- "Why should I pay a Programmer to write and maintain code when our
SysAdmin can get it off the net for free?" This from a company with no
programming staff, who expected their SysAdmins to obtain, support and
maintain, the company's entire computing operation solely with "Free
Software." They attribute the success of their company over the past 10
years and now worth several million dollars, to their ability to hire
no more than two "cheap Linux programmers" at a time, to run their
computers for them. It was a most enlightening interview. Scary, but
enlightening none the less.
T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
# Beige G3 - Rev A motherboard - 768 Meg
# Flat-panel iMac (2.1) 800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg
# PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg]- Tru64 5.1a
magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com
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