On Thu, 2003-03-13 at 04:03, James Ralston wrote: > My big concern here is that Red Hat's current strategy doesn't seem to > acknowledge the fact that servers sometimes have to be cutting edge, > too.
I think we acknowledge that our off-the-shelf offerings aren't going to be right for everyone in every situation. It sounds like you have some needs that neither the Consumer or Enterprise line is quite right for. Some of our larger clients have unique needs so they pay us to help them. This level of support goes beyond the level of 24x7 support and into the realm of custom engineering. The kind of needs they have aren't something that a off-the-shelf product can provide. But then, one of the reasons that they choose Linux is that it can be modified more easily than some other proprietary operating systems can. > Here's an example. I want to hook MIMEDefang into our incoming > [sendmail-based] mail systems, so I need sendmail 8.12 in order to get > milter. I have two choices: > > 1. Deploy an Enterprise-based server. Upgrade sendmail from 8.11 > (which is what ships with AS/ES) to 8.12. Upgrade every other > package which depends on sendmail (and vice-versa). Maintain > all of these packages (security errata, et. al.) myself. > > 2. Deploy a Consumer-based server, which has the recent versions > of the packages I need. Upgrade the server every 6-9 months. > > The important cost factor is my time: when the time it takes to > upgrade assorted Enterprise packages to the versions I need exceeds > the time it takes me to rebuild a Consumer-based server, going with > the Enterprise-based server becomes a lose. In your case the Consumer based product may make more sense. By all means, choose the product that best meets your needs. That goes for everything, not just software. However, if your company was willing to spend enough money so that it made business sense for us to do some custom engineering for you, I'm willing to bet the business people would consider it. Again, I'm a developer not a marketeer, but that's my guess. > P.S.: *Is* there an Enterprise-line mailing list? (I'd like to hear > others' impressions of what the water is like before I jump in > myself.) I don't think there is an Enterprise mailing list at the moment. Cheers, Brent -- Phoebe-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list
