WOW. I could not put it better than the subject above. I have been a RedHat linux supporter for about 5 years now. Until this morning!!!!
With the announcement by RedHat to discontinue their retail product past the 9.0 version, I have been patiently waiting to see what shakes out of the mess. I finally decided to contact them this morning to determine what course of action I needed to follow with regards to my RHN subscriptions. We had purchased 5 Enterprise Management accounts in April 2003 and then purchased another 2 Enterprise Management accounts on Sep. 29th. Since RedHat announced they are going to cease support of the RHN for RH9 after 4/30/04, I needed to find out what RedHat plans for those of us who have purchased a RHN subscription that will last beyond their 4/30 deadline. Before I go into detail, I must explain that for the first time ever in my working with Linux, I ended up getting off the phone feeling like I used to feel when I would call MS for support. :( I called the 1-866 number to speak to a sales rep. about our account. I sat on hold without speaking to a single person for 50+ minutes. Finally, a sales rep. answered. I asked for the information and was promptly transferred to customer service. The customer service rep. was completely unable to help in any way whatsoever. Basically they explain the situation like this: The contract entered into by RH and myself allows me to obtain updates, patches, and bug fixes for currently supported products. Once a product is "End of Life", RH is no longer responsible to provide access to any of the updates or to continue to provide new fixes via the RHN service. The only two courses of action they will continue to support is if the user who has an existing contract upgrades their product to the RH WS, ES, or AS product line. In this case, RH will continue to provide access to the RHN service at the level purchased for the upgraded product. In other words, if you purchase the RH WS product, you can obtain updates etc.. for that product through the term of your existing contract. (Since you have to purchase the upgrade product to do this, and since the upgrade product includes the support contract giving you a year of access to the updates anyhow, aren't you then paying twice for the same service???) Scenario two they support is that if you have purchased a Enterprise Management contract, AND if you contact them within 60 days of the date of purchasing that contract, they will credit you the pro-rated amount of that contract for the dates you have used so far. Then, to obtain the updates for your existing product through the April 30 window, you must pay $20 per license for a temporary contract to allow your existing server to connect to the RHN service. Then, when 4/30 arrives, you will no longer be able to connect with that product and must update to the WS, ES, AS product to obtain access to the RHN service again. If you fail to contact RH within 60 days of purchasing your contract, you will be unable to obtain a refund for the pro-rated amount and will be required to upgrade to the newer version of the software to continue to access the RHN service past 4/30. The explanation for all of this by the customer support rep. is that RH has the right under the license to stop providing RHN support at any point it feels is justified since the EOL date for RH9 has been posted for a year. It has simply been a kindness that RH has continued to provide updates, bug fixes etc.. for previous products well beyond their EOL dates. They simply have made a business decision to not follow that course of action with regards to the RH9 EOL date and instead have decided to put an EOL on the RHN support for that product also. While I understand they have a legal right to do this, it does not seem ethical or in line with the Linux community, or with their own historical methodology. All of this rings eerily like the company up North who plays strong arm tactics with licensing repeatedly. It seems to me that RH has decided that it is big enough now, that it no longer needs to cater to the needs of the small user or organization. Oh well, I know I am probably preaching to the choir, but it is important that the Linux community know what one of the community leader's is doing to it's user's. On Mon, 2003-11-17 at 08:14, Brandon Mercer wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > An annual fee of $379 per machine to run Linux ??? > > > > Try Gentoo Linux (http://www.gentoo.org). It comes at the cost of > > downloading two ISOs and roasting them onto a CD-R. After that you > > install and upgrade packages whenever you feel like it over the > > Internet. > > > > Mind you, the install is done at the command line prompt. Gentoo > > doesn't come with a fancy graphical installer, but it works like a > > chime for me. > > > > > After making the previous post I did many people probably won't give > this one much credibility... but I totally agree with this post for > gentoo linux. It's PHENOMINALY stable and customizable.... but if you > have many (more than 10 or so) server to set up at any one time I'd > probably steer towards a different distro as well. I'm using Gentoo on > my desktop right now and the great thing about it is that I can do all > my updates from the command line... much like redhat update, I don't > have to pay for them... AND I can customize the compilation of the > program however I want all from the command line... lets see you do that > from a redhat up2date agent . Seriously though, my company just > switched COMPLETELY from microsoft to linux and we've gone through just > about every distro and we've had to weigh the options very heavily. > We're running Lotus Domino on our RH server right now and it doesn't > perform nearly as well as our slackware boxes. Neither are running a > graphical interface and both only have running what they need... just > something about it. Anyhow, I hope somebody finds some help from all > this. Brandon > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This SF. Net email is sponsored by: GoToMyPC > GoToMyPC is the fast, easy and secure way to access your computer from > any Web browser or wireless device. Click here to Try it Free! > https://www.gotomypc.com/tr/OSDN/AW/Q4_2003/t/g22lp?Target=mm/g22lp.tmpl > _____________________________________________________________________ > Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss > For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net > ------------------------------------------------------- This SF. Net email is sponsored by: GoToMyPC GoToMyPC is the fast, easy and secure way to access your computer from any Web browser or wireless device. Click here to Try it Free! https://www.gotomypc.com/tr/OSDN/AW/Q4_2003/t/g22lp?Target=mm/g22lp.tmpl _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
