On Mon, 6 Oct 2003 10:17:57 -0400 (EDT)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> [...]
> I'm thinking that might actually be the best bet for us. Some of our
> customers are interested in paying RHS the big money for support, but most
> are not. Their needs are small, and all involved (except maybe RHS) feel we
> can handle them without help from RHS. If they run into a huge problem,
> they can also pay for support at that time. All we want is a supported
> distribution.
>
> This is, to some extent, freeloading, and thus may not be sustainable, in
> the long-run. With the "old" RHL, we were willing to "work with" RHS, but
> the new pricing structure simply isn't feasible for us.
I just came across an interview with Bruce Perens, in which he comments on
several of the topics we touched upon in this thread.
>From this week's LWN, which will be published day after tomorrow (I'm happy
and proud to have paid, and to be continuing to pay, for a subscription -
LWN is worth supporting!). Bruce Perens, interviewed at the Colorado
Linux Users and Enthusiasts (CLUE) this week, has been considering a
"community-driven answer to Red Hat's enterprise products".
"'I'm wondering if it's time for a grass-roots enterprise Linux, and
the way I figured I would do this... is first of all take Debian, why
is there a Fedora project when there's Debian, a ten-year-old project
with all its policies done...with over a thousand developers? That
is what the Fedora project should be. Take that, and get together the
community of enterprise users who depend on Linux and really want a
zero-cost enterprise distribution.
[...]
I'm thinking about whether it is time for the community... to provide
directly a Linux distro ceritified to LSB and to proprietary software
providers that are willing to do so, guaranteed to be free software
and free beer, free speech and free beer. A certified distribution
that is zero cost, free software... and I'm convinced that creating
a Linux distribution is an expense-sharing system rather than a
profit-making system, even Red Hat now admits this as they attempt
to offload production of their distribution to the community.'"
[Later on Perens decribes his scale for commercial collaborators with
the community. It ranges from benefactor, through partner, and user,
to parasite. Very sapient. (Guess who rates "parasite"?)]
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