On Sunday 09 November 2003 03:17 pm, James Sparenberg wrote: > Basically I interpret what he said as, "Thanks to your devotion over the > last 8 years we have a solid product, now fsck off and don't bother us > anymore. Your work, time and effort we didn't pay for, has been of > tremendous value to us and we no longer think you are worth being > concerned about." Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not alone in this feeling. > So to all former RH users "Welcome to Mandrake".
It is possible that they are doing exactly that. It is also possible that RH is acknowledging what a lot of other people have been slowly coming to realize, including myself, that MS sold the public a bill of goods when they convinced them that with the right OS, they could administer and manage a computer without gaining any real knowledge about what they are doing. Consumers won't get that message from a community effort like Fedora, but they have come to expect it from a commercial software company like RH. For better or worse, and as so many newcomers to Linux point out, people are looking for a replacement for MS Windows that does everything that it promises to do but doesn't just promise to do it but delivers. It is possible that there is some OS that will deliver on that, but I have yet to see it and don't believe that it will ever appear. In point of fact, that is precisely what MS has also been selling enterprises on for even server administration. Shows why a lot of MSCE's are so woefully unprepared to do real troubleshooting and actually fix problems versus the reinstall/reboot crap that MS teaches. And also why so many companies find it now so easy to outsource support to 3rd world locations at low wage rates. How hard is it to teach someone to say "reboot and if that doesn't work then reinstall." If RH plans to throw away the desktop market and only sell servers, then they will soon find themselves marginalized in much the same fashion that Sun is currently marginalized to a very niche market. That doesn't really seem the way to expand and grow your business, and I wouldn't expect them to succeed at that either. If, however, they manage to keep enough ties between their server offering and the community sponsored desktop offering to convince companies that they can implement Fedora on the desktop, and RH in the enterprise and still get seamless integration between the two, compatibility and shared knowledge among support staff, then they may be able to actually sell a value proposition that actually delivers what it promises to deliver and not the load of bunk that MS has up to now been selling. I look at it this way. You can pay a higher price and get promises, support and accountability which is worth it for a business by buying RH. You can get the same functionality, but with more accountability placed on you to talk to the community and figure your problems out with Fedora. You get the same software either way, but the "free" version is only financially free, it requires personal responsibility. The pay version requires less responsibility and more money. Same choices that people have always had with Linux. Only now, they have slapped a different name on each just to make it more clear to the PHB types. -- Bryan Phinney Software Test Engineer
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